"grow house"

[Alice Faber]

Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> On 3/11/07, Grant Barrett <gbarrett at worldnewyork.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Mar 11, 2007, at 16:53, Charles Doyle wrote:
>>
>> > I recently heard on a local news broadcast from Atlanta about a
>> > narcotics raid in a residential neighborhood of a nearby town.
>> > Residents of the subdivision were astonished to discover that a
>> > GROW HOUSE was located on their street. In the ediface so
>> > designated, quantities of high-grade marijuana were being cultivated.
>> >
>> > UrbanDictionary.com does not record "grow house"--though Google
>> > exemplifies it amply.
>>
>> A similar term is "grow operation" or "grow-op."
>>
>> http://www.dtww.org/index.php/citations/grow_op_1/
>
> Also "grow room", which is used in reference to indoor (hydroponic)
> gardening more generally, not just marijuana cultivation.
>
> Here's the earliest cite for "grow house" I've found so far (on Google
> Book Search):
>
> "There are countless numbers of grow houses (premises wherein large
> quantities of marijuana are grown and cultivated) in Portland." --1986
> Major City Survey on Drug Arrests and Seizures: Report of the Select
> Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. Published 1987.
>

These seem to be based on "grow lights", which goes back much further.

This is my first search in Google Books, so be gentle. The earliest
drug-related "grow lights" seems to be around 1983 (A GPO report on the
drug problem). A 1983 citation from Sunset House Plants, 1983, provides
a definition of grow lights, suggesting it's a new term (though my
mother had grow lights in her basement as early as 1972).

There *may* be an instance in the Compton Encyclopedia, which *may* have
been published in 1950.

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Alice Faber                                      faber at haskins.yale.edu
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