Pubdate: Wed, 17 Dec 2003
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2003, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://www.canoe.com/NewsStand/TorontoSun/home.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Thane Burnett

TEMPTED BY THE MONEY

You would think few people would agree to stuff condoms full of cocaine 
down their throat or push a surgical glove full of heroin in their rectum. 
And you would be wrong.

There is no shortage of Canadian drug mules and packers, ready to travel 
abroad for shipments.

However, police say the community organizing cross-border imports is 
close-knit, and relatively small.

"Money -- it all comes down to the dollar," explains RCMP Supt. Ron Allen, 
who's in charge of the GTA Drug Section for the Mounties.

For shipments worth tens or hundreds of thousands on the street, mules can 
be paid as little as a week in the sun or a few thousand dollars.

Allen has chased big drug smugglers off the east coast -- pictures of the 
yachts found loaded with cocaine decorate his office walls -- and he has 
seen how creative small drug runners can be while trying to sneak an 
estimated 24 tonnes of cocaine into Canada each year. They included a woman 
who arrived in Toronto with two kilos of cocaine hidden in her wig.

And it's not just to Canada. Last year, at least 60 Jamaican drug mules a 
week were being arrested at London's Heathrow Airport.

Mules who are caught after landing in Toronto are doing better than those 
nabbed in foreign countries. In Jamaica, you can be in prison for years.

But recently, Canadian justice officials have noticed a trend by some 
Ontario courts to treat trans-shipping drug mules as victims of 
circumstance. They've been given light sentences, with police being told to 
go get the drug barons, rather than the couriers. 
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