Fake Weed a Growth Business for Advocate

Joseph H. White of New Image Plants, shows off decorative silk marijuana plants that he sells as props, training tools and decorations from his Greenfield, Mass., home on Thursday, July 13, 2006. During the past two years, White has rolled his pro-pot activism and business savvy into New Image Plants, a startup company that sells the make-believe marijuana online. (AP Photo/Paul Franz) (Paul Franz - AP)

His early customers were people looking for gag gifts, party planners in search of unique decorations and law enforcement agencies needing replicas for training missions.

Then Hollywood came calling, and New Image Plants hit a financial high.

In April, White received an order for 355 plants from "Weeds," the Showtime cable television series about a single suburban soccer mom who deals marijuana to support her family.

Julie Bolder, the show's set director, needed to concoct a grow room stocked with what would look like $1 million worth of marijuana. She called White after stumbling on his web site.

"I looked hard to find somebody to make us good weed, and Joe did the best job," Bolder said. White's pot will make it's television debut early in the show's second season, which airs in mid-August.

"All the weed you see on the show is Joe's weed," Bolder said.

The order brought in about $40,000, about five times what White said his company had earned since it sprang up 18 months ago.

Suddenly, the business became bigger than he expected _ or needed.

Along with his continued work for Change the Climate, White is the senior vice president of Share Group, a private organization that offers consulting, fundraising and marketing services to nonprofit organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood.

He is also the president of another marketing company that works with smaller clients.

Although he isn't relying on New Image Plants as his main source of income, White sees no competition in the mock marijuana market and expects his sales to continue building from the interests of "the hundreds of millions of people who smoke pot and the hundred of millions of people who have no problem with it."

The plants are assembled by White's manufacturing partner in Jupiter, Fla., by workers who attach stems and leaves made from imported Chinese silk to a thin, wooden trunk. The plants are wedged into a pot with a foam base, then topped with moss. The flowering marijuana models that sell for $80 to $190 come with a few buds attached. His hemp models, which do not have flowers, sell for $65 to $150.