MARIJUANA IN DUMP LEADS TO TEMPTATION

TORONTO - To the various strains of Canadian marijuana, among them British
Columbia Bud and Quebec Gold, add the now-famous Ontario dump weed.

After seizing marijuana plants worth $13 million (U.S. funds) at a farm
near Brechin, Ontario Provincial Police decided the haul was too big to
burn, so they loaded the plants into 50 vans and took them to the Orillia
city dump, just down the road from the police station.

Despite the proximity to the police station and the mounds of garbage piled
on top of the marijuana, once word got out that the largest seizure of the
substance in Ontario history was just sitting in the dump, the race was on
to retrieve it.

"There were whole rows of guys with shovels digging it up all night and
hauling it away in trucks," said Ron McInnes, who owns the Orillia Pot
Shop, a marijuana paraphernalia store.

"There were at least 100 of them out. They came from the water side (across
Lake Simcoe) by boats; they came by car and parked at the back; and they
were laughing and chatting all night long."

McInnes said he did not make the trek, but said three friends had told him
the plants were "covered with compost, but once you got into it, the pot
was fine."

Orillia Mayor Ron Stevens said disposing of the plants in a dump was not
unusual.

"It was buried with all kinds of sludge and garbage," he said. "People
would have to be out of their minds to want to dig through that and smoke it."

Indeed, Ontario Provincial Police Detective Sgt. Rick Barnum said he
"squirms" just thinking about what the garbage pickers had to dig through
to get the decomposing plants.

Still, they managed to cut through the fence and gather the "dump weed,"
McInnes said, without being noticed by police until a tip to Crime Stoppers
put a halt to the digging.

When police arrived, they arrested six men who were stuffing their pockets
with rotting marijuana, Barnum said.