A $4-MILLION BUST

Kamloops Rural RCMP made one of their biggest drug busts of the year yesterday.

Two thousand marijuana plants, six swimming pools, dozens of barrels filled
with fertilizer, five miles of irrigation pipe and more than $4 million of
B.C.'s finest bud all met their demise during the operation.

Somewhere deep in the woods 40 kilometres north of Savona is one angry pot
grower, says Cpl. William Keeley as he wields a 12-inch machete. "He's even
gone through the trouble of painting the hose camouflage. This operation is
more sophisticated than most.

"This is a highly commercial operation. It appears to have been in
operation for a number of years."

It's harvest time for British Columbia's largest cash-crop industry.
However, as marijuana buds bloom and growers and dealers prepare to cash in
on a $1-billion industry, local police look to cut their crop down at the
stock.

In the past week, Kamloops Rural RCMP officers have chopped up more than
4,000 pot plants, most north of Chase, with a street value closing in on
$10 million.

"This is the right time now for us to go out," says Const. Jay Bentham, who
has walked for hours through remote wilderness searching for the valued
weed. "It's easier to see because the plants are as big as they're going to
get."

Originally, eight police officers expected to use a helicopter harvest and
remove three plots totalling 1,000 plants and dismantle three above-ground
swimming pools which watered the crop via a network of irrigation pipe. As
helicopter pilots Const. Jodeen Cassidy and Sgt. Dave McCullough
transported the crops to areas accessible by trucks, a common theme could
be heard on their radios.

"Oh great, I found another one," repeated Cassidy between drops. Within two
hours, they had found four more plots, three more pools and another 1,000
plants.

"We're just scratching the surface," Bentham says, adding police probably
only find five per cent of the outdoor operations, many of which ship
product to the United States.

"There's so much dope grown on Crown land around here. What limits a grower
is his imagination. They can grow it everywhere and it's very difficult for
us to tell where it is."

Despite their best seek-and-destroy efforts, Bentham says putting the
grower behind bars is about as easy as finding a needle in a hemp stack.

"In cases like this, there are often no charges. We can't identify who
grows it. It's grown on Crown land and they don't stay on site," says
Bentham. Adds Keeley: "Once he saw the helicopter, he high-tailed it out of
here."

Whoever it was, he was serious about protecting his crop. Police found at
least one bear trap designed to snap the arm of anyone who stumbled across
the operation and may have reached in to take a bud.

As for the angry pot grower, he won't even get a whiff of pot as police
torch his cash crop.

"It's burnt outdoors locally," Bentham says. "We'd rather not disclose the
location."