Finding that sketchy guy for a bag of weed in Washington Square Park could soon be as outdated as milking your own cow. Pot production is about to go industrial. Of course, you’ll have to head to Canada to take advantage of it.

CEN Biotech — a nutrition company best known for an amino acid supplement — is working on opening the “largest and most advanced” legal marijuana production facility in the world. The Ontario site will be able to grow 1.3 million pounds of pot from 50,000 plants — an operation that could produce $5 billion in sales per year when it starts producing in a few weeks after it passes government inspections. No more hiding grow lamps in closets: This $20 million facility will churn out pot like other factories churn out aspirin. And it has plans to expand to the US.

“The facility is done, it’s ready,” CEO Bill Chaaban says. “It’s laid out [like] a manufacturing facility for prescription drugs.”

The factory, which will house 50 different strains of cannabis, is legal thanks to recently changed medical marijuana laws in Canada that ended home growth of pot plants and required users to buy from large-scale commercial facilities being set up around the country. The demand for medical pot in Canada created a backlog that led to the creation of these new “super-grow” sites.

“Basically, what the system has become is de facto legalization,” Chaaban says. “We foresee the Canadian market from going from 40,000 patients to 500,000 in next two years.”

The plant will be run by a “dream team” of former law enforcement employees, lawyers and farmers.

But don’t go on a bong-buying spree just yet, America. Marijuana remains illegal on the federal level here. However, with medical marijuana programs rapidly moving forward in many states (including New York) and recreational legalization proving a hit in Colorado and Washington, that might not be the case for too much longer. The company is planning to expand operations to the United States and is eyeing Nevada to set up a US facility. But for now, it’s waiting for the federal government to act first.

“Being located in Canada and the treaties between US and Canada currently, we believe once it changes federally we can export to the United States and supply the market,” Chaaban says.

There’s no timeline on when that could happen, but attorney general — and admitted former pot smoker — Eric Holder has said he would work to reclassify pot. Currently it’s listed among the Schedule I drugs considered highly dangerous alongside heroin and ecstasy. And earlier this year, President Barack Obama told the New Yorker he thought marijuana was less harmful than alcohol. This from a man who smoked pot with his pals at his Hawaiian high school in a group they dubbed “Choom Gang,” according David Maraniss’ book “Barack Obama: The Story.”


http://nypost.com/2014/05/06/worlds-larg...pen-in-ontario/

That makes me sad to see where the pot growing scene has gone to in Canada. Progress??? What is the penalty for getting caught growing your own?