Pubdate: Sat, 05 Mar 2005
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2005 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author: Sarah Kershaw, New York Times News Service
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Rochfort+Bridge (Rochfort Bridge)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
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'BC BUD' AFFLICTS CANADA

KILLING OF MOUNTIES SHOWS EXTENT OF DRUG PROBLEM

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 over the 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.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Wayne Oakes said the four Mounties and the suspected 
gunman were found in a Quonset hut on the farm late Thursday. A government 
source told The Canadian Press the suspect killed himself after shooting 
the officers.

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."

He added, "It's getting worse and worse, and we need to address it at every 
level."

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 is also 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, the murder rate has soared in the past two years, 
Canadian officials say, because of killings linked to warring drug gangs. 
Some people have even died in drive-by shootings.

Now law-enforcement officials here fear the violence will migrate south. 
Winchell likened currently low-crime Seattle, to "Miami before the drug 
wars," because of what he said was an impending threat of drug-related 
violence.

Drugs and money are now flowing through Seattle and other West Coast 
cities, he said, along the I-5 corridor from California to the Canadian 
border. In some cases, traffickers are smuggling cocaine north from 
California to pay growers for marijuana grown in Canada. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake