Police Bust Multi-Million-Dollar Cannabis Grow-Op in Quinte West, Ont.

Article by Angela Stelmakowich, Growth Op

Three people have been charged after provincial police discovered thousands of cannabis plants and hundreds of kilograms of dried flower at a property in Quinte West.

Discovery of the large-scale grow follows execution of a search warrant on the property earlier this week by the Ontario Provincial Police’s Provincial Joint Forces Cannabis Enforcement Team. The police “seized approximately 3500 illicit cannabis plants, including over 800 lbs of dried #Cannabis valued at approximately $4,500,000. Three people charged,” notes a tweet from the OPP.

According to The Intelligencer, Guanzhi Cao, 44, Hongjun Zhang, 54, and Yingen Cao, all from in and around Toronto, have each been charged with cultivating, propagating or harvesting a cannabis plant from seed or plant material that is illicit cannabis, cultivating, propagating or harvesting a cannabis plant outside their dwelling house, and possession for the purpose of distributing.

The accused have since been released and are set to appear in court on July 22.

Under the federal Cannabis Act, those of legal age in their home province or territory can, among other things, possess up to 30 grams of legal cannabis in public, share as much as that amount with other adults and grow from licensed seeds or seedling as many as four plants for personal use, reports Legal Line.

Those rules are also in effect in Ontario, where the provincial government reiterates that the starting material for marijuana plants must be purchased from the Ontario Cannabis Store or an authorized retail store.

Quinte West was also the subject of another recent raid in which the OPP found more than 1,100 cannabis plants valued at $1.2 million in April, Global News reported at the time.

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