PICTURESQUE ISLAND IS 'FERTILE CENTRE' OF MARIJUANA BOOM, U. S. WEEKLY CLAIMS

Potatoes are not the only things growing on Prince Edward Island,
according to an article in a Boston alternative newspaper.

The weekly Boston Phoenix says in a feature article that what it calls
"Pot Edward Island" is a haven for marijuana growers, fuelled by
inexpensive electricity from Quebec.

Writer Alan Earls says that beneath the island's bucolic image of golf
courses, white sand beaches and red clay roads, there is a gritty
rural backwoods full of hopped-up criminals.

The province is "the fertile centre of an underground marijuana
explosion," opines one headline.

Mr. Earls cites a 2008 government survey that nearly half of the
province's high school and middle school students use drugs and notes
that so far in 2008 the RCMP have seized 2,608 grams of marijuana,
almost double the amount in 2007.