cannabisnews.com: Super Pot: B.C.'s Bonanza





Super Pot: B.C.'s Bonanza
Posted by FoM on February 01, 2000 at 11:19:00 PT
By Timothy Appleby
Source: Globe & Mail
By a lonely, snow-swept highway just outside town, where the Coast Mountains blend into Washington's Skagit Range, a well-trodden path through thick brush leads south into the United States.A sketch of a marijuana leaf has been mockingly scrawled on a wooden post that marks the border. It's an apt symbol. This is just one among scores of drug-smuggling routes that riddle British Columbia's porous, 800-kilometre-long border with the U.S. Northwest.
The province is now home to a huge -- and extremely profitable -- marijuana export trade that appears to be leaving law enforcement in the dust. "This is not a bunch of old hippies," says the head of B.C.'s new Organized Crime Agency.In a few short years, the marriage of hydroponic technology and organized crime has given rise to a multibillion-dollar enterprise. To the consternation of the United States, thousands of "grow operations" now send south an annual crop that the normally skeptical Economist magazine recently pegged at several hundred tonnes.Aided by high-powered lights, fans, watering systems, nutrients and a wealth of other accoutrements, plants can resemble large Christmas trees and yield several pounds of potent pot each, which triples or quadruples in value by the time it reaches New York or Los Angeles. There, a pound of B.C. pot fetches around $6,000 (U.S.).In the Woodstock era, marijuana commonly had a count of 2 or 3 per cent of the ingredient that gets you high -- tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Today, the B.C. variety routinely runs 15 to 20 per cent -- and a mind-addling 27 per cent in one recent seizure.Police say that through their wiretaps they have found that B.C. "bud" is now so powerful that it is being exchanged, pound for pound, for cocaine. Annual marijuana revenues approach those of forestry (worth $14.4-billion in 1998) and probably surpass tourism's (about $8.5-billion).Not surprisingly, hydroponic supply stores have mushroomed across the Lower Mainland. In 1990, there were three; the current Yellow Pages list 29. Even Home Depot now sells whatever a grower needs. One retailer estimated his hydroponic sales at $6-million a year, and he was under no illusion about its chief purpose. "How many cherry tomatoes do you want to grow?" he laughed.Growers often outfit several sites, including warehouses. One man rarely went near his operation. Everything was controlled from afar by a laptop computer."It's out of control," said RCMP Inspector Kim Clark, who heads the province's proceeds-of-crime unit. Last year, his office seized about $12-million worth of cash and property linked to the hydroponic marijuana trade. He calls it "just a drop in the bucket." By all estimates, the Hells Angels now dominate the grow business, although a member of the U.S. Border Patrol said about 70 per cent of the smugglers caught last year were of Vietnamese descent.But there are still a lot of people such as Steve, a wily independent grower who is cautious about the company he keeps and has managed thus far to evade detection -- and the rising tide of violence that police estimate accounts for up to 20 homicides a year.Steve is a clean-cut, middle-aged entrepreneur who brokers the sale of hundreds of thousands of tax-free dollars worth of top-grade pot to the United States each year, all grown on Vancouver's affluent west side.He delivers a product whose THC content dwarfs that of Mexico, Jamaica and almost everywhere else, and he has plenty of survival rules.But there is one, he says, that is ironclad: Stay on the city's west side. Never set up shop east of Main Street."You don't get on the Hells Angels' turf; it's theirs and they have it," he explained over a drink in a Kitsilano restaurant, where he outlined what he termed "a mom-and-pop operation" that has paid for his child's private schooling and a modest art collection.Steve takes pride in the fact that he doesn't carry a gun, but many growers do. Along with the killings, police say, is a rising number of drug rip-offs, robberies, shootings and assaults that, for obvious reasons, go almost entirely unreported.Then there is the plus side: A low risk of detection, lenient court sentences, the absence of money-laundering legislation, weak-kneed organized-crime laws, an RCMP that is understaffed, and a vast U.S. appetite for a product that is, by every estimate, the best in the world.Add to that U.S. penalties for drug cultivation that have become so severe (in Texas, a sizable grow operation can draw life imprisonment) that many U.S. pot farmers have now moved to Canada, according to the U.S. Border Patrol. Tolerant B.C. has long been home to a thriving pot culture. Drug offences are double the national average, and a poll last year found that 63 per cent of the population favoured decriminalizing simple marijuana possession.Effectively, that has already happened. Under provisions of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, suspects arrested with less than 30 grams of cannabis no longer have to be fingerprinted, and busts in B.C. for such quantities have all but ceased.But the export trade, accounting for upward of three-quarters of the pot grown in B.C., has reached such staggering proportions that last May, Canada narrowly escaped being placed on the U.S. government's black list of drug-source countries, alongside, for example, Colombia, and Afghanistan."The border has become an irresistible temptation to international terrorists and smugglers," U.S. Representative Lamar Smith complained this month, posing "a direct and growing threat to citizens in both Canada and the United States."Indeed, the U.S. administration announced plans this week to beef up security along its northern border with the deployment of almost 600 new agents. The catalyst was the recent arrests of inbound Algerian terrorist suspects, along with a number of illegal immigrants, but the marijuana issue looms almost as large."I don't think anyone has any idea what the extent of the problem is. It's huge," said Dave Keller, intelligence head for the region's U.S. Border Patrol. Just how big is the marijuana-export business? A takedown in Langley, B.C., this week uncovered an operation comprising 3,400 plants, along with about 100 pounds of compressed, ready-for-export pot, but most are smaller.Insp. Clark offers some math.In the first nine months of last year, roughly 4,500 people across Canada were charged with cultivating marijuana, and of those, about 2,500 were residents of B.C.The average B.C. bust involved about 500 plants, with a fast-ballooning average net value (south of the border) of about $1,000 per plant. But most farmers harvest three crops a year, which if undetected would translate into a potential of about $1.5-million per operation per year.Allowing for the fact that more than one person was charged in some of the busts, that still pushes the value to more than $3-billion.And those are just the operations taken down in nine months.As for the unseen total value, "I'm comfortable with a figure of about $10-billion a year in B.C.," Insp. Clark said.The U.S. Border Patrol in the region has seized about 500 pounds of U.S.-bound pot in the past three months. "As far revenue-producing goes, marijuana is way, way beyond the rest of the drugs [flowing south]," Mr. Keller said.On the Canadian side, enforcement falls to the Integrated Border Team, comprising the RCMP, Canada Customs and the U.S. Border Patrol, armed with infrared cameras, movement sensors and -- most critical -- intelligence tips. In the past 10 months, about $12-million worth of drugs and money has been seized, a small fraction of the total.At best, it's a rear-guard action."Asian crime and the Hells Angels are the two areas of concern," said the integrated team's RCMP Inspector Dick Grattan. "But here, this is not targeting the CEOs. This is just watching the back door." Steve's operation, modest as it is, illustrates how profitable the business can be. He operates a meticulously controlled hydroponic operation in the basement of a rented house, producing around eight crops a year of 16 to 18 pounds each time.Harvested by a band of well-paid, close-mouthed clippers, Steve's pot sells for about $2,400 a pound. He also takes in $400 a pound from three other west-side grow operations whose sales he negotiates.Steve could hardly be more watchful. Rent to his offshore landlord and household bills are paid on time or early. There is a car in the driveway, even though nobody lives in the house. At Christmastime, the lights go up. At Halloween, candy is handed out from the door. The lawn is trimmed, the bird feeder full.Above all, and in contrast with some other drug dealers, Steve won't have anything to do with cocaine because of the people the violence-saturated coke business attracts. A cocaine merchant once stopped by his grow house. Steve vacated the premises the next day.To insulate himself, he sells his product to a middleman. "I need a buffer between me and the Americans."Compressed into bricks, the marijuana is then driven, shipped, flown or carried -- by far the most common mode of transportation -- across the heavily forested border, often in hockey bags, where a network of distributors waits.It cost Steve about $40,000 to set up his state-of-the-art grow house, which included $4,000 paid to an electrician to carry out an essential bypass operation, which diverts and conceals the substantial quantities of electricity sucked up to produce normal-looking bills.His chief concern is that cannabis will soon be legalized, depriving him and his associates of their livelihood. "I'm feeding four families and I don't feel bad about anything I do." Through Steve's lens, the booming hydroponic industry looks pretty benign. But it has a darker side.RCMP intelligence suggests that provincewide, it accounts for about 20 homicides each year."We have on average between six and 10 homicides that we know are directly related to the grow operations," said RCMP Chief Superintendent Gary Bass, who heads the force's major crime section for B.C."But those are just the ones where the body is basically found at a grow op. There's probably quite a few more. . . ."There is no data bank to cross-reference violence and the pot trade. Drugs are dealt with by federal prosecutors. Provincial Crown attorneys handle most other offences. But police who specialize in busting grow operations say violence, commonly in the form of home invasions, has become routine."It's very territorial, no different than any other type of drug trafficking, whether it's heroin or cocaine," Chief Supt. Bass said. "We see the same players for the most part . . . and it's the same rules, the same violence." Some killings can only be described as stupid.Witness the October, 1998, slaying of house caretaker Paul Smith in the Willoughby district of Langley. As with many of B.C.'s marijuana farmers, Mr. Smith, 38, was a Maritimer, brought west by his lifelong friend Robert MacDonald. Along with another buddy, Richard Roach, Mr. Smith's job was to look after Mr. MacDonald's grow operation of 322 plants.When yet another drunken argument erupted between the two house sitters, Mr. MacDonald showed up with a .32-calibre handgun and shot Mr. Smith in the face, sending a torrent of blood gushing through the floorboards to the grow room, one storey down. (He was sentenced to four years for manslaughter, pleading self-defence.)"MacDonald got mad because this [arguing] had been going on, enough's enough, and it was drawing attention to the house," said RCMP Staff Sergeant Rick Lawrence, who heads the Langley plainclothes section.Or take the killing last May of Michael Blommaert, 44, in Surrey. This, too, involved an argument at a grow operation. Mr. Blommaert was slain with the 12-gauge shotgun used to guard the budding crop of about 260 plants.In both cases, the grow operations were believed to be independents, but most are not, said Allan Castle, a money-laundering expert who lectures on organized crime at the University of British Columbia."There are very few growers in the province who are not controlled by an organized group, with about 70 per cent of it controlled by Hells Angels," he said. "Among the rest, the Vietnamese are the biggest players, and the two groups have been killing each other at quite a rate in the last few years."That stopped about a year ago and my sense is that some turf agreement has ultimately been reached."If there is an accord in place, that probably gives the groups an edge over the province's organized-crime specialists, largely in limbo for the past year. Until October, 1998, organized crime was the bailiwick of the trouble-plagued Co-ordinated Law Enforcement Unit. Then, B.C. Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh scrapped the joint-force unit and set up the Organized Crime Agency, which only became operational this year.The regular RCMP, meanwhile, is also struggling. Its current strength, provincewide, is about 5,300 -- 800 fewer than what it says it needs.Heading the new, 100-officer crime agency is Chief Officer Bev Busson, who says the marijuana-export trade shows signs of spreading across Canada. Certainly there have been plenty of hydroponic busts in Ontario and Quebec."It is massive," she said. ". . . It's big-crime business and people end up dying over the amounts of money being made."But the Hells Angels' connection to the drugs industry is hard to prove."Their organizational structure makes them very difficult to infiltrate or work on," Chief Officer Busson said. "They're very careful."After a top-secret investigation in Vancouver last year, two B.C. Hells Angels were charged with importing cocaine, while in nearby Surrey, another member was busted at a marijuana grow operation.But such charges are rare. Among their 90 or so "made" members in B.C., plus perhaps twice that number of associates scattered across seven chapters, most Angels have no criminal records, and many do not even look like bikers. Many favour expensive suits, stock options and large houses in quiet Lower Mainland communities.The police say B.C.'s Angels are the wealthiest in the organization and supervise a dedicated contingent of expert horticulturists who oversee a vast network of grow operations, few of which are operated directly by members.Efforts to reach the Angels and their lawyers were unsuccessful."I'd suggest you take a walk," said a bearded, unfriendly figure unlocking the chain-link fence surrounding the clubhouse of the group's White Rock chapter, which moved to Langley several years ago.When the bikers moved in, purchasing two hectares through a numbered company for about $300,000, local property values plummeted by at least 25 per cent, a neighbour said.But for the most part, he added, the Angels' behaviour has been above reproach. Last year, hundreds of bikers from across North America showed up for a funeral, "and that was a real eye-opener." But day to day, there are no rowdy parties, no pit bulls snarling at the gates, no litter, no pot smoking on the steps of the white frame house."They go out of their way not to attract attention," the neighbour said. "These are business people, and they've been allowed to operate all these years without interference." Timothy Appleby is a national crime reporter with The Globe and Mail.Chilliwack, B.C. Published: January 29, 2000 Copyright © 2000 Globe Information Services Related Articles:Mary Jane In The Hot House - 1/02/2000http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread4545.shtmlBe Careful Kicking Down the Door - 1/01/2000http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread4544.shtml 
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Comment #4 posted by Graham on May 01, 2001 at 01:53:39 PT
Sweet!
BC is so awsome! I go up there at LEAST once a year to go to Big White to board, and when I go up I can find 8 grams of chronic marijuana for $50US! That's like...awsome! So, way to go Canada! Smoke on!!
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Comment #3 posted by The GanjaKing on January 13, 2001 at 20:34:19 PT:
Heres My Opinion
I think the B.C govornment should seriously consider legalization and more importantly de-criminalization. It would be an enormous source of revenue, although it would give the average pot-smoker like me a higher per joint price because of taxes, so as long as they are careful they can make a lot of money and use that money to fund programs that badly need it. And I am not refering to the Into the politicians pockets program. I mean Education, health care and transportation. 
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Comment #2 posted by jeff hastings on April 05, 2000 at 05:02:25 PT:
stoners
STONERS FUCKING RULE,  FUCK EVERYONE ELSEYOU ALL FUCKING SUCK HUGE COW COCK
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on February 01, 2000 at 13:03:56 PT
Pot of Gold
By Michelene SkakoonPublished: Tuesday, February 1, 2000Globe & Mailhttp://www.globeandmail.com/Whistler, B.C. -- I am amazed that a government that claims it doesn't have enough money for proper health care and education continues to ignore the billions of dollars of untapped revenue that could be garnered from the legalization of pot (Super Pot: B.C.'s Bonanza -- Focus, Jan. 29). This refusal to face the issue has created a nation of tax-evading bootleggers and a political environment that fosters organized crime.Marketing boards are a lot cheaper than law enforcement. Pot will continue to be grown, sold and smoked, like it or not. Remember Prohibition? The issue here is who should be doing the growing, farmers or biker gangs? And who should be profitting, the country as a whole or organized crime? Pot is here to stay: Admit it, tax it.
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