By Al Tompkins, Poynter Institute

KUSA 9News in Denver recently found itself on the trail of a great story, but the trail also lead through an ethical minefield.

The station's investigative reporter Jace Larson learned that Colorado's medicinal marijuana laws allow licensed growers to cultivate pot for customers holding prescriptions, but nobody anticipated what would happen next.  The station learned that the growers are raising plants in their homes.  Right there in neighborhoods, in high-end gated communities and neighbors have no clue.

The station gained the trust of a grower who allowed cameras in his house, showing a stunningly elaborate ventilation, lighting and irrigation system.



The station, with the help of local law enforcement, gained a list of all of the licensed grow operations in the Denver area. Armed with this information, the station could easily have built an interactive map, showing anybody who wanted to know, where the pot is growing.  But V.P. for News Patti Dennis worried that information would make the grow houses a target for criminals.

So KUSA had to balance those concerns against the mission of journalism, to find information and tell it as fully as possible.  To make things more complicated, as soon as the station aired a promo about the upcoming story, Drug Enforcement Agents raided the home of the key character in the story and arrested him for growing more pot than he was licensed to grow. In Colorado, pot growers can grow up to six plants for each patient they are licensed to serve.

I talked with Patti about her decision-making process:

What were your main concerns about publishing the location of the grow houses?

Because these homes are in residential neighborhoods and legal according to State drug investigators who have visited each home, we decided to publish the neighborhoods rather than specific addresses.  Robbery and arson have been reported in homes that grow a large amount of pot.  We felt our purpose was to show how widespread the suburban pot growing business really is. We used a map with animation to show the many, many neighborhoods with pot growing operations.

Do you see any downside to just giving general locations, nothing specific?

Because the new Colorado State law allows people to grow if they register with the State and have a Caregiver’s license, we thought publishing the specifics was not really fair.  We are just beginning the process of investigating zoning laws and HOA’s that might prohibit the sale of suburban medical marijuana.   Because the grower is not selling to the general public but only to dispensaries and those with prescriptions, the zoning laws may or may not be in play.  That was not the focus of the first story.

What, if any danger do these houses pose to others?

The dangers are increased crime as far as we can tell.  

Do the grow houses  violate the law or zoning codes?

We are just beginning to look into zoning laws…our focus with this story was to get “inside a grow operation” and to show how much one person can grow and how his venting and irrigation systems work.   We also focused a small part on the expense in trying to set one of these growing operations up.  The air flow systems, water, special lights, fans, etc are elaborate.

A long time ago, you taught me an interesting question to ask in situations like this.  You said, we should ask "how could we explain why we didn't tell all we know?"  How would you answer your own question in this case?

This was a tough call but we decided that a list of medical marijuana grow houses might be very dangerous in the wrong hands.  I would hate for someone to take our list and commit crimes all because 9News created the road map.

The biggest issue here is that the new Colorado Medical Marijuana law is so vague and so loosely regulated that it has exploded in a confrontation between the State police and Federal agents.   In addition, there are about 15 doctors writing 80 percent of the prescriptions to mostly men between the ages of 18 to 40.  The law is now a focus of new, tighter legislation in the Colorado State House. But it is also a political grenade as the movement to keep medical marijuana available is quite loud.

Watch KUSA's story "Marijuana Next Door." 

Ethical Questions:

How would you have answered questions from neighbors who saw that there was a pot house near their home but don't know exactly where the marijuana house is? Couldn't vague information put more people at risk if thieves just started randomly searching a neighborhood for the right place?

Isn't it reasonable to think that anybody who gets a state permit to grow pot gives up some privacy protection as part of the deal?

How would you have made the decision on whether or how to identify the local grow operations?  How would you have defended your decision?

How would your decision be different if you learned a grow operation was located near a school, church or daycare?