Reformed Marijuana Grower Devises Grow-Op Board Game

VANCOUVER - A Vancouver-based team has created one of the West Coast's most coveted holiday gifts this season: The Grow-Op Game, a board game that gives players a taste of running a marijuana grow-operation in B.C.

The two creators call Grow-Op an educational board game that highlights the risks of the pot business.

"You get ratted on by neighbours, hydro cuts you off, you get floods, there are tons of stuff that is negative about it," game creator Ivan Solomon told the Canadian Press Saturday.
"People would think that with grow-ops everyone would like to have one in their basement, that it's easy money. It's far from being easy."

The Monopoly-style game is the brainchild of a twenty-something former pot grower who goes by the name "The Rabbit."

According to the game's website, The Rabbit devised the game while serving a prison term, envisioning Grow-Op as a way to show would-be grow operators "all the excitement, danger, rewards and failures of 'Growing B.C. Bud' without the real risks associated with the industry."

During his time as an "entrepreneur," Rabbit experienced everything from flooding, fires and fungus to bugs, ceiling collapses and "that inevitable knock on the door from the authorities."

Grow-Op players must move around the board renting properties, buying equipment and plants, and growing and then harvesting marijuana. An entity known as the "GrowBuster" also moves around the board and, if it lands on a player's property, rips out the grow operation and sends the player to jail.

Though the game only came together about a month ago, word about Grow-Op has already spread, causing a big stir in places like Vancouver's Amsterdam Café, which has reportedly received countless calls from people looking for the game.

Marketed online by the Board Games Corp., The Grow-Op Game retails for $29.95 US.

Written by CBC News Online staff

Link to article: http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2004/12/20/Arts/growopgame041220.html

 

16/02/2005 - 19:31:52

A Monopoly-style board game in which players run an endangered marijuana-growing operation has been pulled from the New York Toy Fair at the 11th hour.

The Toy Industry Association concluded the Grow Op game violated the fair's criteria.

Vice-president Jean Butler told Canadian-based manufacturer Bored Games Corp that the fair aimed to market fun, educational and safe products to support the positive development of children.

“This game's concept is considered contrary to our goals,” she said.

Grow Op highlights the perils and risks involved in the marijuana-growing business. It cautions the would-be grower by demonstrating that the road to easy money is not always an easy one.

The game is the brainchild of an unidentified former grower whose business was plagued by troubles, culminating in a knock on the door from the authorities and a jail term.

But, keen to capitalise on the business, he invented a game where people could experience all the dangers of growing marijuana without the real risks.

While trying to grow the herb, players may be exposed by neighbours, have electricity cut off or have their harvest endangered by floods, fires and fungus, not to mention police raids.

Bored Games Corp spokesman Ivan Solomon said games promoting violence, gun use and crime were commonplace at the Toy Fair.

“How could a board game that advocates sensibility before crime be more harmful than the video games, toy guns, and warfare games that have killing and war as their main theme?” he said.

The American International Toy Fair opens in New York this weekend.

Link to article: http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=133901372&p=y339xzx78