Pubdate: Wed, 06 Sep 2000
Source: Hamilton Spectator (CN ON)
Copyright: The Hamilton Spectator 2000
Contact:  http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/
Author:  Gloria Galloway

HEROIN BUSTS 'HUGE'

Two major drug busts in the past week -- one in Toronto and one in 
Vancouver -- have netted more heroin than Canadian police forces seized in 
all of 1998. And the officer in charge of the Toronto investigation says at 
least some of the illegal and highly addictive substance was headed for the 
Hamilton area.

Superintendent Ben Soave, the RCMP commander of the Combined Forces Special 
Enforcement Unit, said yesterday the 57 kilograms of heroin found last 
Thursday in a shipment of duck eggs would have supplied the whole Golden 
Horseshoe.

"This (would be) a huge quantity for just Toronto," he said after a press 
conference to announce the seizure and the subsequent arrests.

Two women, Lee Sui Ping, 46, and Sun Wei Hong, 49, and one man, Huang Zhi 
Yong, 21, have been charged with importing and trafficking heroin. Another 
unnamed person is also charged.

The police peg the street value of the drugs -- an amount equivalent to 
2.85 million individual doses -- at $142.5 million. The operation also 
turned up 17 kilograms of pills that had not been identified yesterday.

At the same time as the Toronto announcement, RCMP in Vancouver told 
reporters they had seized three million doses of heroin and arrested seven 
men, some of whom they allege are "senior architects of an international 
drug smuggling operation."

The Vancouver heroin is more pure than that found in Toronto but the value 
per kilogram is lower. That's because a hit of the drug on the West Coast, 
where addiction is rampant and heroin is more readily available, costs 
about $30 compared to $50 in this region, Soave said.

"It's supply and demand."

Police are still trying to determine if the two trafficking schemes are 
related, he said. The announcement of last week's seizure in Toronto was 
held off until yesterday because "it would have spooked the people away 
from (the Vancouver) investigation."

The Toronto drugs were sent by ship from China to Canada then watched 
closely by police until they ended up in a Scarborough warehouse. The 
heroin was stored in 1,700 plastic replicas of duck eggs that had been 
packaged with 174,400 of the real eggs, a Chinese delicacy.

"We cracked the case," said Sauve, joking about the fact that his officers 
had to open the eggs, one by one, to find the illegal stash in an 
atmosphere where the air quality quickly deteriorated.

"It was like living in a warehouse that was constantly being bombarded by 
stink bombs."

Sauve was disappointed that the Toronto investigation, which included 
customs agents, Toronto police and forces in China and Hong Kong, did not 
turn up "the kingpins that we would have liked."

But, he added, "We hope to have more arrests in the near future."

The police also hope that by taking such a large quantity of heroin out of 
the market, the habit will become too expensive for many drug users, 
particularly the younger ones. Just under 2 per cent of Toronto students 
polled during a recent survey admitted using heroin in 1999.

Detective Sergeant Rick Wills, who heads the Hamilton Wentworth police drug 
unit, said there is no indication students in this city are shooting up. 
Nor is heroin as abundant as cocaine or crack cocaine.

But "the problem with heroin is that it's so underground and so secretive," 
he said. That makes it difficult to track.

Miranda Borisenko, a program consultant with the Addiction Research 
Foundation in Hamilton, says the number of heroin users in Hamilton would 
number in the hundreds.

"We probably have around 400 people who could benefit from methadone (the 
treatment that is used to wean people from heroin)," she said. "And we 
probably have around 200 people who are using that service."

Just last week, John David Helson, a 57-year-old Hamilton lawyer and former 
head of the Hamilton Criminal Lawyers Association, was charged with 
possession of heroin and other drugs for the purpose of trafficking. Police 
allege he was hiding a stash during a visit to the Hamilton-Wentworth 
Detention Centre.

"It's not really at the bottom end because it really is very expensive," 
Wills said.

Some heroin addicts manage to support their habit while holding down good 
jobs, he said.

But even if its use is not widespread, and even if it can be managed by 
some people, the drug can also be deadly. Three fatal overdoses in Hamilton 
were attributed to the drug during one five-week span last fall.

In Vancouver, there were more than 300 such deaths in 1999. So police hope 
this week's seizure will make a dent in the heroin trade.

"If you remove this, it's going to hurt the market for quite a while, 
especially because other people will stop their shipments," Sauve said. 
"It's going to have a significant impact on the quantities available."
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