Pubdate: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 Source: Times Union (Albany, NY) Copyright: 2012 Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation Contact: http://www.timesunion.com/forms/emaileditor.asp Website: http://www.timesunion.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/452 Author: Dan Freedman PUTTING A LID ON POT ENTERING U.S. Mounties Look to Quash Indoor Operations and Stop Trafficking WASHINGTON - The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are attempting to reduce the amount of Canadian marijuana flowing into the U.S. by focusing public attention on grow ops - clandestine indoor operations that cultivate high-potency pot. "Marijuana and the grow ops are jet fuel for organized crime," said RCMP Superintendent Eric Slinn, the force's drug branch director. "If we bring down the amount of grow ops, we diminish the amount of marijuana that travels southbound across the border." Slinn and two colleagues from the Mounties met last week with the Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement agencies, as well as briefings on Capitol Hill. Drug trafficking across the U.S.-Canada border is a two-way street, with Canadian-made hydroponic marijuana and ecstasy tablets flooding the huge U.S. drug market while guns and cocaine are smuggled northward from the U.S. into Canada. The U.S. Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy, issued last month by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the drug czar, reported that Canadian drug gangs use revenues from trafficking marijuana and ecstasy into the U.S. to buy cocaine for resale in Canada at a profit of over 50 percent. Crime groups also exchange drugs for guns. The RCMP's anti-marijuana program, the Marijuana Grow Initiative, is aimed at organized crime groups that retrofit homes often in suburban neighborhoods with sophisticated lighting, irrigation and ventilation systems plus chemicals to maximize marijuana yield. The gangs, which range from Chinese and Vietnamese ethnic organizations that operate in British Columbia to motorcycle gangs and traditional Italian or Irish organized crime groups in Ontario and Quebec, show no compunction about damaging property to produce their wares, Slinn said. Chemicals seep through walls and insulation, producing high levels of mold that are hazardous to health, he said. In addition, he said, gangs often raid competitors' grow sites to seize their crops. Sometimes they go to the wrong address and end up terrorizing innocent families. "We can get off into a debate about whether smoking marijuana is bad for you," Slinn said, but there is little dispute that "growing marijuana is posing significant health and safety issues for law-abiding Canadians." The U.S. foreclosure crisis and the relatively reduced risk of indoor growing could lead to an increase in grow ops in the States. The strategy behind Canada's initiative involves dollops of deterrence and law enforcement but the most significant ingredient, Slinn said, is working with "stakeholders" who may not realize the negative impact of marijuana grow ops. These include electric power companies, which lose revenue because gangs rarely pay for the high amounts of power their operations consume, and insurers and homeowners who unwittingly rent to growers. They are stuck with bills for fixing mold-encrusted homes. Law enforcement "is not the right messenger," Slinn said, so the strategy aims at highlighting the stories of grow ops victims in order to encourage citizen whistle-blowing on indoor marijuana sites. "While it's a Canadian strategy, one of the reasons for our coming down here was to tell our U.S. colleagues we're doing something about marijuana," Slinn said. The U.S. is the chief transit zone for cocaine coming North from Colombia through Mexico and up into Canada. The U.S.-Canada Joint Border Threat and Risk Assessment for 2010 noted that since 2005, the amount of cocaine seized entering Canada from the U.S. has more than doubled. "Our concern on the north side of the border with cocaine is it's very damaging," Slinn said. "I've seen a lot of lives ruined by crack cocaine, and it's not just the user. I'm talking about the rest of the family." Gun laws in the U.S. are more permissive than those in Canada, so gangs illegally import weapons to fuel growing levels of drug violence north of the border. "There's been a marked increase (in drug-related gun violence) over the last five years," said RCMP Sgt. Dave Williams, who works in street-level drug enforcement in Vancouver. "There's gangland-style shootings." While U.S.-Canadian law enforcement cooperation remains solid, the population difference between the two nations virtually guarantees the U.S. will remain a target for Canadian traffickers. "It's simple economics," Slinn said, noting that the U.S. population of 307 million dwarfs Canada's population of 34 million. Like any business, Canadian organized crime asks only, "Where can I sell my product?" Slinn said. "It's all about money." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom