With all due respect, on the subject of need for patients...if they smoke more than 5ozs per month...that's probably why they're sick (again respectfully).
First of all, imho that is not respectful. I am dealing with pain patients that are at the top (or actually a bit over the top) of the maximum dose of morphine they can have per day. The cannabis not only lowers the dosage a bit but makes them cope with everyday life. From a 400 watt grow in scrog, which lasts about 10-14 weeks (depending on the strain that works for them) they can harvest about a gram per watt (that's more than 14 oz). Of course not every beginning grower accomplishes that, so let's say they do get 10-12 oz. Because of the the law in the Netherlands they can't have more than 5 plants. Growing in The Netherlands still isn't legal, but up to 5 plants is regarded home use. So there are different circumstances everywhere. Another thing is that those people are usually the ones without a regular income because they can't work. So their set-up needs to be simple and efficient. For many it is even hard to do a grow anyway because of their condition. 3 grams per day is not a very heavy dose for them. Not saying this is a typical medicinal user but these are the cases I am dealing with here, it's why I breed the Anesthesia.
Cannabis activist and medicinal user Jacqueline Woerlee has Crohn disease. She has a recipe for 15 grams of cannabis per day. These are not isolated cases, I'm not talking about wannabe medicinal stoners, no disrespect at all to real medicinal users.
Now I don't know what yields you are talking about under the 180 watt plasma lights but surely not 14 oz for a starting grower. And though I am sure for many, and probably most of the medicinal smokers and light recreational users it will be enough there is a serious group of patients that will not be able to even buy the setup, let alone be able to harvest enough cannabis for their own use (and I did not even consider the many couples that are both medicinal smokers.
For those who can afford it and are really into growing, have enough money to invest andthe right location for it, I'm sure it will be a blessing.
About the climate control in the system used: The fan and filter are rightsized for the application, and I can assure you there are no odour leaks in this filter. Climate control is not a real issue with these temperatures. It's not hard to buy a fan and a filter that work well under these circumstances. The rooms are 2 x 1 cubic meter and 1 x 2 cubic meter. We expect the fan to extract about 300 cubic meters per hour. So all rooms are refreshed about 75 times per hour. That's 1.25 times per minute. Now I'm sure this could easily be right-sized for any small grow room with the proper filters and fans for very little money. The intake is passive from the room itself, which is 20 degrees Celsius. It's a very normal very low-tech set-up without any special lab equipment (other than the nice PLC controls which are just luxury).
There is no climate problem with plasma, that's one of the main benefits!
