Pubdate: Wed, 14 Jan 2009
Source: Houston Today (CN BC)
Copyright: 2009 Houston Today
Contact:  http://www.houston-today.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4080
Author: Tom Fletcher, Houston Today
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

NOT ALL RURAL ECONOMIES ARE GOING BUST

There's one area of B.C. business investment that's seen a boom in
rural areas. Unfortunately, it's organized crime.

You may have heard the saga of Likely, a tiny community east of
Williams Lake. Last fall RCMP confirmed results of a two-year
investigation that found eight properties with buildings fitted for
large-scale marijuana growing. At least one of those has been seized
under civil forfeiture legislation, a powerful new tool in targeting
proceeds of crime. Nine Lower Mainland residents, all with Asian
names, were charged.

Are there more Likelys out there? No doubt the gangs learned about the
hazards of creating a cluster in one place.

Just before New Year's Day, police used snowmobiles to raid a property
near Clearwater, north of Kamloops. They described it as a machine
shed with industrial-style wiring that appeared to have been built for
a grow-op.

Further north, Houston RCMP resorted to using their holding cells to
store masses of seized hydroponic equipment. That's according to
deputy RCMP commissioner Gary Bass, who spoke to a conference on the
hazards of grow-ops in Surrey last May.

The problem goes beyond marijuana, a relatively benign drug. Bass
noted that the popularity of "B.C. bud" has led to many new players in
the cocaine trade. Even small local groups tend to have ties to bikers
in southern B.C. who have developed lucrative bud-for-blow
arrangements reaching down to South America.

And when bullets fly in B.C. communities, there are generally hard
drugs, often cocaine, involved.

Surrey Fire Chief Len Garis spearheaded a new approach that targets
safety hazards of bad wiring and high electricity consumption. In 2006
the B.C. government passed legislation allowing municipalities to
obtain hydro records showing high-consumption properties, then inspect
those properties. Piloted in Surrey and Abbotsford, the approach has
since been adopted in Coquitlam, Langley Township, Mission, Pitt
Meadows, Port Coquitlam, Richmond, Surrey and Vancouver.

Recent hydro records show a 20 per cent drop in high-consumption
properties around the Lower Mainland. Now Garis fears the problem has
simply been displaced to more remote sites.

Garis says other provinces are acting. In 2006 Manitoba agreed to pay
for electrical inspections, instead of leaving it to communities that
can't afford it, as B.C. is doing.

"We're a world crime superpower predicated on marijuana," a frustrated
Garis told me. "Eighty per cent of what we're growing here is being
distributed corporately to other provinces, the United States and elsewhere.

"We've made a booming business out of it because we're resting on our
laurels, saying, oh, we don't want to regulate, and yet this thing
just spirals out of control. It's ridiculous."
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MAP posted-by: Doug