DRUG'S CHEMISTRY ALTERED JUST ENOUGH TO BEAT ILLEGAL DRUG POSSESSION RAP

Police have been forced to drop charges against a man caught with a
cache of 28,000 pills because the drug -- which has the same effect
as LSD and Ecstasy -- is not illegal.

RCMP and Canada Border Service Agency officers raided a Moncton home
two months ago and seized a shipment of pills worth $1-million that
they thought were LSD and Ecstasy.

But the people who made the pills altered the drugs' chemistry just
enough to beat the law -- the drug they found no longer matches any
on the list of restricted drugs under the Controlled Drug and
Substances Act. So charges were dropped against a 41-year-old man for
possession of illegal drugs.

The pills contain a "designer drug" is known as Piperazine, a
chemical used to make industrial cleaners, made in clandestine labs
in Europe by black-market chemists, police say.