Pubdate: Sun, 11 Feb 2007
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2007 Calgary Herald
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Matthew Ramsey, CanWest News Service
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

BRAIN DRAIN HITS B.C. POT FARMS

Grow Op Skills In Demand The World Over

A different kind of brain drain is underway in B.C. as pot growers 
share their billions of dollars worth of skills with a worldwide audience.

"We think they're exporting their expertise," said Supt. Paul Nadeau, 
director of the RCMP's national drug branch. "We've heard of it on an 
international scale."

Nadeau says he's in regular contact with law enforcement counterparts 
in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and all report 
busting grow ops with links, either direct or indirect, to organized 
crime groups operating in B.C.

Enhanced border security in post-9/11 America is driving the 
information-sharing and possibly adding an unintended front to 
America's "war on drugs." Why cross the border from Canada with a 
load of high-grade marijuana when you can find people willing and 
schooled in how to grow it for you in the U.S.? That may be the 
scenario playing out in a recent Washington state bust.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officers and police in King County took 
down a large grow-op ring three weeks ago, arresting seven people and 
seizing an estimated $5 million US of marijuana (4,991 plants) and 
more than $250,000 in cash.

"Detectives believe all those houses raided are part of a large, 
criminal organization with connections to British Columbia," said 
Sgt. John Urquhart of the King County sheriffs department.

"This is basically the 'B.C. bud' transplanted to Washington," said 
Urquhart. "This is not the first time."

Urquhart was reluctant to expand on the nature of the connections and 
the organization involved.

But when Nadeau was asked who in B.C. is exporting their skills, his 
answer was simple -- "Everybody."

"Everybody (organized crime groups) is into it (marijuana production) 
in B.C. There's a lot of money to be made," he said. A study released 
by the Fraser Institute in 2006 pegged the retail value of marijuana 
grown in B.C. at $7 billion and estimated there are at least 17,500 
grow ops in the province.

Adam Otte, a DEA special agent, noted in Seattle District Court 
documents that the seven Vietnamese-American suspects arrested in 
Washington were seen at multiple grow ops. "I believe they were an 
organized crime group of marijuana growers who helped tend their 
associate's grows," Otte stated.

"It comes down to the business of huge profits," said Darryl Plecas, 
a criminology professor at the University College of the Fraser 
Valley and author of the 2002 study, Marihuana Operations in British Columbia.

"What's happening there (in Washington State) is characteristic of 
organized crime in general. They go wherever there's an opportunity," 
Plecas said.

Nor should it be surprising, says Julian Sher, award-winning author 
of The Road to Hell: How Biker Gangs Conquered Canada.

Sher points to an example of intelligence sharing in his book, where 
he documents how a Hells Angel acquired a recipe for the drug speed 
in a California jail, then promptly exported that recipe to 
colleagues in Australia for production.

"Technology, like drugs and money, flows very quickly in the 
organized crime world," said Sher. "It stands to reason that B.C., 
where the grow ops are the biggest cash crop, that technology flows 
east and south."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman