Pubdate: Sun, 06 Mar 2005
Source: Tampa Tribune (FL)
Copyright: 2005, The Tribune Co.
Contact:  http://www.tampatrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/446
Author: Sarah Kershaw, The New York Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Rochfort+Bridge (Rochfort Bridge)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

MOUNTIES DIE IN ESCALATING POT WAR

SEATTLE - The drugs move across the Canadian border inside huge
tractor-trailer rigs, pounds and pounds stashed in drums of frozen
raspberries, tucked in shipments of crushed glass, wood chips and
sawdust, or crammed into hollowed-out logs, in secret compartments
that agents refer to as "coffins."

Kayakers paddle it south from British Columbia across the freezing
bays of America's northwest corner, and well-paid couriers carry up
to 100 pounds at a time in makeshift backpacks, hiking eight hours
across the rugged mountainous terrain that forms part of the western
border between the United States and Canada. Small planes drop it in
hockey bags equipped with avalanche beacons to alert traffickers that
the drugs have landed.

The contraband is called BC bud, a highly potent form of marijuana
named for the Canadian province where it is grown and which has become
the center of what law enforcement officials say is an increasingly
violent $7 billion cultivation and smuggling industry.

On Thursday, four officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were
shot to death in Alberta, British Columbia's neighboring province, as
they were searching a marijuana growing operation, one of many on the
rise there. The killings stunned a country that has not lost that many
officers at once since the 19th century.

Police identified the four Mounties as Peter Christopher Schiemann,
Anthony Fitzgerald Orion Gordon, Lionide Nicholas Johnston and Brock
Warren Myrol.

Myrol, 29, had been on the job for only two weeks.

Leigh H. Winchell, special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, which investigates drug crimes along the border
and is now part of the Department of Homeland Security, said the
Alberta police killings were stark evidence of "how serious the BC
Bud issue is getting, how much money is involved and the lengths to
which these criminals are willing to go to protect it."

"It's getting worse and worse, and we need to address it at every
level. The funding needs to be there and the resolve of law
enforcement to address it needs to be there - on both sides of the
border. It's a very dark day for all of us."

This new wave of drug trafficking, with northwestern Washington state
and Seattle a key transit point, comes as an enormous challenge to
U.S. law-enforcement agents stationed along the often-invisible border
between the two countries.

They already are dealing with the threat of terrorism, the flow of
immigrants and new human-smuggling operations, being run by some of
the same Canada-based criminal organizations moving the marijuana
south and cash, cocaine and guns north, U.S. and Canadian law
enforcement officials say.

The situation also is spotlighting sharp differences in the way the
two countries deal with drug crimes, with some officials and experts
on both sides of the border saying Canada's less-stringent drug laws
have made it harder to stem the flow of contraband north and south.

In British Columbia, a rural province in a country that long has
enjoyed a low crime rate, the murder rate has soared in the past two
years, Canadian officials say, because of killings linked to warring
drug gangs. Some people have died in drive-by shootings.

Inspector Paul Nadeau of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who runs
the Coordinated Marijuana Enforcement Team in British Columbia,
estimated that in that province alone, 3.7 million pounds of BC bud is
produced annually, in up to 20,000 indoor operations, with as much as
50 percent of it being smuggled into the United States, from
Washington to Michigan.

Wholesale, BC bud sells for about $3,000 a pound, although the price
goes up the farther from Seattle. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake