RAIDS AT RESERVES WERE LONG OVERDUE

Last week's police raids at Kahnawake, Kanesatake, and Akwesasne were
both welcome and long overdue. Nobody should be above the law.

The $2 million in cash, the $1 million worth of marijuana, and the
assault rifles and grenade launchers hauled away all testify
eloquently to the magnitude of the problem.

The charges laid against the 29 people arrested tell a striking
story, too: gangsterism, drug exportation, illegal weapons
possession, drug possession, drug trafficking, conspiracy to traffic
drugs, conspiracy to export drugs, and drug manufacturing.

The raids were made by the Surete du Quebec and the RCMP working with
the reserves' own police, known as peacekeepers, in a rare display of
co-operation. This teamwork indicates that responsible native leaders
are fed up with the human toll and social damage drug activity
inflicts on their communities. It took resolve and courage for the
peacekeepers to take part in this co-ordinated law enforcement
effort, which developed over 14 months of investigation.

There is, unfortunately, nothing like the same determination to do
something about tobacco-law abuses. The illicit tobacco trade is in
many ways not as alarming as the drug business, but it is big
business all the same. The lobby group for big tobacco companies
claimed last year that 30 per cent of cigarettes smoked in Quebec are
contraband, representing $1.6 billion in lost tax revenue for
governments. Most of the trade, they claim, involves criminal groups
in, or using, aboriginal reserves.

As anyone who's been audited knows, governments are usually
relentless in pursuing lost tax money. But this old, old cigarette
problem has been met with years of police inertia, largely because
politicians have no taste for a confrontation with native hard-liners.

Many reserve residents who deplore the social damage done by illegal
drugs are tranquilly accepting of the tobacco trade; this attitude
is, we understand, reflected by peacekeepers. This is an unfortunate
double standard in law enforcement.

At least governments are finding other ways to crack down on tobacco
crooks - including non-natives. This winter's federal and provincial
budgets both included measures aimed at tightening control. You now
need a federal licence to own cigarette-mass-production machinery,
and licences can be refused or cancelled when officials are barred
from a premises. Quebec, meanwhile, is tightening restriction on
sub-contracting of cigarette manufacturing, and taking other measures.

These are worthwhile measures. Nobody should be above the law.