Pubdate: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU) Copyright: 2005 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc. Contact: http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274 Author: James Mennie Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) PEDDLERS, PRANK OR JUST POT LUCK? "I don't know," says Richard Cote, a spokes-person for the borough of Plateau Mont Royal. "We'll get calls about syringes being found, and we have blue-collar personnel who are trained in how to dispose of them. "But this is the first time I hear about something like this." The "something" in question is your average playing card (the four of clubs, to be precise), stapled to which was a small plastic bag containing enough marijuana to just about cover your thumbnail. A pager number was written on the card, and at some point Tuesday this apparent attempt at direct marketing was left on the doorstep of a young couple living in the Plateau. When half the couple got home, he noticed the card, looked around to see if anyone else was a part of the sampling, so to speak, and deduced he alone had benefited from what can only be described as pot luck. At first, the couple thought about calling the cops. But then they remembered the sermons on police priorities they'd received when they'd telephoned to report vehicles parked illegally in front of their home. They figured the SWAT van wouldn't be sent to check out less marijuana than a teenager would spill rolling his first joint. So they told The Gazette. "We know the Plateau's crazy for drugs," she said, the neighbourhood being crazy enough that she asked that her name not appear in print. "But this -" Over at police headquarters, the suggestion some dealer may be resorting to the same marketing techniques used to sell cookies, detergent or shampoo was met with skepticism. There were no reports of similar incidents, a police spokesperson said, adding: "Generally, people don't leave drugs lying around unless they've been paid for. ... This seems more like a bad joke than anything else." And maybe it is a bad joke - one played on the couple, or on someone at the address where the card was supposed to have been dropped, or on the owner of the pager. But given the local ubiquity of illegal dope and the extraordinary efforts police make to slacken, if not stop, sales, you have to wonder if we've come to the point where there's simply enough product on the street to make door-to-door marketing a profitable venture. At this time last year, we were talking to officials in the Plateau about another kind of calling card from the drug trade: used syringes. And if these pieces of hazardous medical waste were popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain, it was due in part to the cops in the neighbouring borough of Ville Marie deciding to crack down on the dealers in their territory, an operation that included surveillance cameras in the Latin Quarter, south of the Plateau. Cote said yesterday his borough wasn't receiving more complaints than usual about the drug trade. "Our police are on the job. We've hired police cadets (to patrol) for the summer, and it seems that things are pretty well under control. "Maybe there are some minor transactions taking place a little farther north because of the cameras, but nothing more than that." But everything's relative. The local drug market dropped off the media radar once biker wars for control of that market died down. But even if most of the crews who controlled those sales are in jail, there's always someone to pick up the slack - and cocaine and hashish and marijuana remain immensely popular. So much so that while it seems bizarre someone might be offering free samples of dope to randomly selected households, somehow it doesn't seem surprising. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin