Pubdate: Sat, 10 May 2003
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2003 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Colin Nickerson

OTTAWA'S MARIJUANA PLAN IRKS US

OTTAWA -- Canada's plan to decriminalize marijuana, making possession of 
the country's potent weed no more serious than a traffic ticket, has the 
Bush administration fuming. The view from Washington is that the mellowing 
of Canadian drug law will result in even more smuggled bales of ''B.C. 
Bud,'' ''Quebec Gold,'' and ''Winnipeg Wheelchair'' -- the last so named 
because of its supposedly disabling effect on users -- reaching American 
pot puffers.

For years, Canadian courts, if not police, have taken a far more lax 
attitude toward marijuana than do most jurisdictions in the United States. 
Such a laissez-faire approach, according to law enforcement officials on 
both sides of the border, has enabled biker gangs and Asian organized crime 
groups to make Canada a powerhouse of hydroponic pot production, with 
thousands of high-tech, indoor operations in British Columbia, Manitoba, 
and Quebec yielding hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of heady product.

''Most of it is going straight to the US market,'' said a senior drug 
investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, requesting anonymity. 
That southward flow of Canadian cannabis explains why the proposed easing 
of the marijuana law is fast becoming a serious source of friction between 
Ottawa and Washington.

In terms of tonnage, Canada accounts for only a small share of the 
marijuana smuggled into the United States. But in terms of value, some drug 
enforcement officials believe Canadian pot has surpassed Mexico's and 
Colombia's among US consumers because its high levels of 
tetrahydrocannabinol -- THC, the stuff that gives pot its pow -- commands 
much higher prices. In American cities, high-grade Canadian grass fetches 
more than $5,000 a pound, according to drug agencies.

Last week, Prime Minister Jean Chretien surprised the United States by 
announcing he plans to put a bill before Parliament that will make 
possession and cultivation of small amounts of marijuana a noncriminal 
offense. The aim, he said, is not to legalize pot but to ensure that casual 
users don't end up with criminal records if caught with a few joints in 
their pockets or a few plants flourishing under basement grow-lights.

Public opinion polls show a majority of Canadians support decriminalization 
of marijuana, while 47 percent endorse outright legalization.

Countries such as Britain and Australia also have taken steps to remove 
criminal penalties for so-called personal marijuana use. But Britain and 
Australia don't share a 5,525-mile border with a superpower whose official 
drug policy is ''zero tolerance.'' Within hours of Chretien's pledge, 
Washington was voicing displeasure and hinting at tighter borders.

''You expect your friends to stop the movement of poison toward your 
neighborhood,'' John Walters, director of the White House Office of 
National Drug Control Policy, told Canadian journalists. ''We have to be 
concerned about American citizens. . . . When you make the penalties 
minimal, you get more drug production, you get more drug crime.''

David Murray, special assistant to President Bush's drug policy director, 
flew to Vancouver and pronounced Chretien's decriminalization initiative 
''a matter we look upon with some concern and some regret.'' Marijuana is 
smoked openly in cafes in the western Canadian city, which is known to 
tokers as Vansterdam, after the Dutch capital where marijuana is legal.

Saying the United States already is fighting a ''flood of illicit 
substances'' from Canada, Murray warned that if the Chretien government 
loosens penalties on pot it may face tighter border security to combat drug 
trafficking. Such a crackdown would harm the billion-dollar-a-day trade 
ties between the two neighbors, with Canadian exporters -- economically 
dependent on the United States -- taking a painful hit.

''We would have no choice but to respond,'' Murray said, echoing the view 
of many law enforcement officials that Canadian marijuana is so uncommonly 
potent it should be considered a hard drug, not a harmless high. ''This 
isn't Woodstock,'' he said of B.C. Bud and other varieties that have gained 
fame among inhalers.

Hydroponic marijuana is grown indoors using heavily fertilized water, 
high-power lights, high heat, humidity, and lately, sophisticated plant 
genetics. As a result, Canadian weed has average THC levels of 15 percent 
to 20 percent while the primo stuff tops out at a mind-numbing 34 percent. 
Latin American pot, by contrast, has an average THC content of about 6 
percent. Garden variety reefer smoked by hippies of the Woodstock era had 
THC levels of about 2 percent. ''The ingredient that gets you high has been 
perfected by Canadian cultivators,'' a US drug enforcement agent said. 
''And way too much of it is already coming our way.''

Drug traffic from Canada is largely controlled by the Hells Angels 
motorcycle gang, which is especially powerful in British Columbia and 
Quebec, and by Vietnamese crime syndicates operating from Vancouver. The 
smugglers can be extraordinarly bold -- in March, a helicopter swooped into 
Vermont from Quebec and disgorged 250 pounds of marijuana to a waiting 
confederate near the rural town of Lowell, 15 miles inside the border.

Relations between Canada and the United States are generally at the most 
rancorous level in decades, the result of trade tiffs, Canadian refugee 
policies that have given the country the reputation of being a haven for 
terrorists, personal insults flung at President Bush by members of 
Chretien's government, and most recently, Ottawa's refusal to support the 
war in Iraq.

Canadian news coverage of decriminalization has focused less on the pros 
and cons of the issue than on the efforts of Uncle Sam to weigh in. ''First 
we're soft on Saddam, now we're soft on pot,'' stated a recent article in 
the Toronto Star, which went on to describe the White House as ''stuck in a 
time warp, taking the world back to an earlier era of Reefer Madness.''

Canadian leaders say removing criminal sanctions against people caught with 
1.1 ounces or less of pot will allow police to concentrate on large-scale 
dealers and smugglers. Deputy Prime Minister John Manley called the US 
notion that decriminalization will lead to increased trafficking ''a bit of 
a leap.''
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens