cannabisnews.com: RCMP Weeding Out B.C. Pot Growers!





RCMP Weeding Out B.C. Pot Growers!
Posted by FoM on June 05, 1999 at 22:52:26 PT
Brock Ketcham, Calgary Herald
Source: Calgary Herald
It was just after daybreak, Dec. 11, 1998. Ten heavily armed RCMP officers stormed a house on a small acreage outside the remote village of Winlaw in the West Kootenays, about 50 kilometres northwest of Nelson. 

An informant had told the RCMP they might find something more than tools in a ramshackle workshop by the house. But all they found was a workbench. Then a tiny hole in the wall aroused a Mountie's curiosity, and he poked an object inside. A hydraulic lift raised the bench from the floor, exposing an elevator. The Mountie and fellow officers hopped aboard and soon found themselves in a three-room underground structure filled with a crop of hydroponically grown marijuana. "It was definitely not a ma-and-pa type of operation," recalls Nelson RCMP Const. Carol Kurbel. The raid is part of a wave of police actions in recent months to crush the marijuana culture in the Kootenay region. The farmer awaits trial on a pot cultivation charge. Other growers throughout the West and East Kootenays -- as well as the remainder of British Columbia -- feel under siege by RCMP who have put the province's legion of pot growers at the top of their drug-enforcement priorities. Mounties have 146 investigations under way in the Kootenay region alone, says Nelson RCMP Const. Tom Clark. And 1,285 people in B.C. were charged with cultivation of marijuana in 1997 -- the most recent year for which RCMP statistics are available -- compared with 805 in 1996. The cultivation of "B.C. Bud," renowned among pot users worldwide for its potency, has been largely the domain of 1960s-era hippies, draft dodgers and other laid-back folk who grew the illegal substance with little risk of police scrutiny or stiff penalties in court. But times are changing, says Sgt. Chuck Doucette, head of the B.C. drug awareness section in Vancouver. Organized criminals ranging from Hell's Angels to ethnic gang members realized they could make huge profits with little legal risk. Three years ago, the RCMP decided to shift much of their drug investigation resources from heroin and cocaine traffickers -- and the results have been becoming apparent, Doucette says. Neighbours are encouraged through newspaper ads to report pot growers to police. "Everybody who's growing dope is starting to look over their shoulders now," says Clark, the RCMP's drug expert for the West Kootenay-Boundary region. "That's what we want." Growers in Grand Forks, a community in the Boundary -- a fertile, semi-arid region between the Kootenays and the Okanagan along the U.S. border -- told the Herald that paranoia is taking hold in the decades-old industry. In Grand Forks, 14 growers have been arrested in the past month, says Paul Dimotoff, a 51-year-old man who has grown pot in this little city for 28 years. "It's a real apprehensive mood," says Dimotoff. "You're looking at everybody now." Dimotoff says growers are honest, peaceful people who do not deserve to be treated like gangsters. "This vendetta by the RCMP is absolutely absurd," he says. "They are bullies with badges." Al Demosky, 65, a musician and dabbler in small business who has lived here for more than half a century, says growers may have become visible to the RCMP through their own greed. "I've got only two plants," Demosky says. "They (RCMP) can get them, but first they've got to find them. "I don't sell it -- it's only for my own use . . . and my friends." The RCMP's Doucette says big league criminals have established a strong presence in pot cultivation and are organizing crops "almost like franchises," telling underlings what equipment to use and how to care for the plants. "They know somebody is growing -- they move in," Doucette says. "It's 'whoa -- you're now growing for me.' " Meanwhile, the stepped up enforcement is threatening availability of B.C.'s potent pot product for the Universal Compassion Club (UCC), a new Calgary group that provides pot to seriously ill people, says pot crusader and club founder Grant Kreiger. Dimitoff agrees. "It will start to have an impact on compassion clubs," says the grower, who cultivates cannabis for personal use and for medicinal clubs. "It already has." Kreiger, 44, who returned to Calgary two weeks ago from Grand Forks, where he spent three days lining up suppliers for UCC, says "they're taking away an industry that's just getting ready to start -- they're trying to shut it down. Last Monday thieves broke into a house UCC is renting and stole the club's stash of cannabis plants and ready-to-smoke pot, worth about $8,000. But Kreiger, who has multiple sclerosis, remains determined to have the club up and running by mid-June. The club has 25 members and Kreiger supplies them with pot from indoor growers in Calgary. He is travelling across Canada to establish contact with other suppliers. Doucette says once the RCMP realized pot cultivation in B.C. was no longer was the exclusive domain of "mom and pop operators and hippies," they began creating "Green Teams" -- squads that specialize in shutting down growers. The RCMP also reassigned individual Mounties in detachments too small for such teams to work on cultivation cases full-time. Doucette says the lenient fines or suspended sentences once handed down by the courts made pot cultivation a congenial criminal enterprise. But with growers showing up in court by the hundreds, judges are handing out stiffer sentences, he says. Clark says that in one recent case in Nakusp, a judge fined the grower $7,500. Fines of this magnitude are five times the amount levied in B.C. only a few years ago, he says. Doucette scoffs at a belief among B.C.'s growers that U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency funding is behind the RCMP crackdown. "Boy -- I wish," he said. While the RCMP applaud Ottawa's decision to create a safe supply of pot for medical reasons, they have no sympathy for compassion clubs. "We take a firm stance that we disagree with medicinal pot because it is illegal," Doucette says. But Dimotoff says no amount of law enforcement will make him quit. "This vocation I have chosen harms no one," he says. "I am livid that so much time is spent locating and harassing the medicine growers. "I talk daily to growers who echo my sentiments. We are all fed up. My friends wish to remain safely hidden. I am too old to care about that, and fear neither jail nor coffin."
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Comment #4 posted by larry on March 11, 2000 at 08:40:43 PT:
vancouver clubs
visiting vancouver end of marchwould like to check out the cannabis clubs..not looking to buy..just intetested in the culturebeen to amsterdam and like to spend part of day in counter culture atmospherecan anybody tell me where they are..or is this a secret??lsan francisco
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on June 06, 1999 at 12:18:18 PT
Hi Dr. Ganj!
Hi Stranger,I pulled my back and I wanted to say High but I can barely type this. I got poison ivy for the first time in years. That will teach me to go into the woods. I stepped on two snakes too! One was under my foot and couldn't get out til I looked down and saw him wiggling! Yuk! EEK and all that stuff! I think I'll stay inside if you know what I mean! LOL!Peace Dr. Ganj!
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Comment #2 posted by Dr. Ganj on June 06, 1999 at 11:36:37 PT
Humboldt Revisited?
Sure sounds like the same broken record, but being played out in Canada. What a waste of the porkers' time. Didn't work here, won't work there. Just a known fact.Oh, for you intrepid entrepreneurs out there, check this link below. This will help quiet that mighty diesel generator. Good luck! Power in numbers, I say. :-)Dr. Ganj
http://www.aeroacoustic.com/enclose.htm
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on June 05, 1999 at 22:56:41 PT
Here is the article!
Here is the direct link to the article!http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/stories/990605/2687621.html
FoM's Freedom Page
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