BRAIN DRAIN HITS B.C. POT FARMS

Grow Op Skills In Demand The World Over

A different kind of brain drain is underway in B.C. as pot growers
share their billions of dollars worth of skills with a worldwide audience.

"We think they're exporting their expertise," said Supt. Paul Nadeau,
director of the RCMP's national drug branch. "We've heard of it on an
international scale."

Nadeau says he's in regular contact with law enforcement counterparts
in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and all report
busting grow ops with links, either direct or indirect, to organized
crime groups operating in B.C.

Enhanced border security in post-9/11 America is driving the
information-sharing and possibly adding an unintended front to
America's "war on drugs." Why cross the border from Canada with a
load of high-grade marijuana when you can find people willing and
schooled in how to grow it for you in the U.S.? That may be the
scenario playing out in a recent Washington state bust.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officers and police in King County took
down a large grow-op ring three weeks ago, arresting seven people and
seizing an estimated $5 million US of marijuana (4,991 plants) and
more than $250,000 in cash.

"Detectives believe all those houses raided are part of a large,
criminal organization with connections to British Columbia," said
Sgt. John Urquhart of the King County sheriffs department.

"This is basically the 'B.C. bud' transplanted to Washington," said
Urquhart. "This is not the first time."

Urquhart was reluctant to expand on the nature of the connections and
the organization involved.

But when Nadeau was asked who in B.C. is exporting their skills, his
answer was simple -- "Everybody."

"Everybody (organized crime groups) is into it (marijuana production)
in B.C. There's a lot of money to be made," he said. A study released
by the Fraser Institute in 2006 pegged the retail value of marijuana
grown in B.C. at $7 billion and estimated there are at least 17,500
grow ops in the province.

Adam Otte, a DEA special agent, noted in Seattle District Court
documents that the seven Vietnamese-American suspects arrested in
Washington were seen at multiple grow ops. "I believe they were an
organized crime group of marijuana growers who helped tend their
associate's grows," Otte stated.

"It comes down to the business of huge profits," said Darryl Plecas,
a criminology professor at the University College of the Fraser
Valley and author of the 2002 study, Marihuana Operations in British Columbia.

"What's happening there (in Washington State) is characteristic of
organized crime in general. They go wherever there's an opportunity,"
Plecas said.

Nor should it be surprising, says Julian Sher, award-winning author
of The Road to Hell: How Biker Gangs Conquered Canada.

Sher points to an example of intelligence sharing in his book, where
he documents how a Hells Angel acquired a recipe for the drug speed
in a California jail, then promptly exported that recipe to
colleagues in Australia for production.

"Technology, like drugs and money, flows very quickly in the
organized crime world," said Sher. "It stands to reason that B.C.,
where the grow ops are the biggest cash crop, that technology flows
east and south."