Summary
This dissertation provides evidence and direction for policy makers dealing with the issue of marijuana production in British Columbia (BC). This document provides a descriptive analysis of the "grow op" industry before moving into a spatial analysis of the effect of police tactical teams (green teams) on grow operations. The final chapters focus on the involvement of organized crime in the marijuana production industry and employ a social network analysis (SNA) framework to illustrate the involvement of different clusters of criminal associations. Using the case of Vietnamese drug p roduction as an example, SNA and geographic information systems (GIS) analyses techniques are combined to assess the spatial and social linkage patterns in statistical and visual terms.