I met over a hundred growers this past weekend. Growers are a cool, cool crowd. A lot more were invited but opted out for security reasons, and I think that was a smart move but in this case luckily the fear was unwarranted. Of course, in this line of work NO initial fear is unwarranted and we never find out that a situation WAS indeed safe until the situation has passed.
I guess the way to safely meet growers is to find that fine line between foolsihly exposing yourself and sitting in a dark house looking out the window for narcs. Use your spidey sense. If it says DANGER trust it. If it says COOL be skeptical. lol.
Some of us have been here in communication long enough that we have come to trust each other, and I have met a few members here who were wonderful people, and one who creeped me the FUCK out.
The only way to protect yourself 100% is to go daily to your boring 9-5 and on weekends barbeque with the in-laws and mow the lawn and not do anything illegal. But once you cross that line, it's important to create barriers where information cannot pass.
If you are going to expose yourself, BUY A TRACFONE. DO NOT SET UP THE VOICEMAIL. DO NOT HAVE A NAME ATTACHED TO IT AT ALL. Use an anonymous email with an IP mask of some type. Never carry weed or plants on your person until you have established that the person is not a narc- and that is a hell of a task, and one which you will never be 100% certain of. A couple years ago, a single week of raids in my county took down over 100 dealers, all but 1 for hard drugs, and the guy who turned out to have been the planted informant was a scruffy, hardcore, inked mofo with gang tats and a bad habit of banging the local dealers' girlfriends. Which just goes to show you can't even trust appearances.