THE POT PATROL: HOW SPOTTERS UNTANGLE WEB OF B.C. BUD

'See the dope down to our left?" says the voice in the headset.

Um, no.

Peering out the window of the RCMP helicopter, several hundred feet up, it
just looks like Vancouver Island down there. Green on green on green. How
can these guys see anything?

The seven-seat Bell Long Ranger 4 circles in lower over a patchy clearcut
and the marijuana comes into view -- maybe 20 clumps scattered over an area
the size of your backyard.

The plants whip in the wind as the pilot gently sets his machine among
them. It's a tight spot, full of logging debris and surrounded by fir trees
planted maybe 15 years ago.

Alighting from the helicopter, Dennis, the pilot, and Grant, the spotter --
no last names, please, we're dealing with organized crime here -- find what
they saw from the air: Black plastic bags of professional growing soil,
each cut open and planted with three or four waist-high marijuana plants.

A black three-quarter-inch water line leads into the tangled bush, where
more plants nestle among the trees.

A dozen bags here, a few there. Twenty plants, barely up to the knees, are
in the hollow of a dead cedar filled with grow mix. Others, by a cluster of
four 45-gallon water drums, reach your chest.

Dennis and Grant sweat in the heat, clambering through salal and over logs,
following the water line hundreds of metres until it ends at an empty bog.

"They sucked it dry," observes Grant. Along the way they find more plants,
more bags, more barrels.

Gradually the picture emerges. What at first seemed to be a site with a few
dozen plants actually has a thousand, scattered here and there.

Use the standard $1,000-a-plant formula and ...

They have found a million-dollar marijuana grow operation.

Not that this is anything new to them. Dennis and Grant do this full-time
from May through October, flying the skies of Vancouver Island, looking for
the outdoor grows that feed B.C.'s marijuana industry. Last year, 650 such
sites were identified here.

"We find dope every day," says Grant. "Every day we go out, we find marijuana."

He's working on contract now, a recently retired 35-year Mountie brought
back to be the eyes of the two-year-old, summer-long air program.
(Previously, the choppers only looked for dope in late August.) Dennis,
also in his fifties, has been an RCMP helicopter pilot for 20 years.

They don't usually land in the grow-ops they find. Standard practice for
the pair -- let's call them the Pot Patrol -- is to take a Global
Positioning System reading off each site and forward it to the local RCMP.
The locals then use their own GPS -- every detachment on Vancouver Island
now has its own -- to track down and chop up the marijuana. It's a big step
up from the old process, in which police often relied on back-of-napkin
maps and imprecise directions given to them by hikers who had stumbled into
plantations.

The eradication effort gets particularly busy each August when the help of
the military is enlisted in Operation Sabot. Canadian Forces helicopters
winch Mounties into remote, hard-to-get-to sites, where the plants, almost
ready for harvest, are hacked down and hauled off in nets slung under the
choppers.

Last year, Sabot got derailed by B.C.'s forest fires. The military's
resources were diverted, meaning police were only able to hit about half
the sites they had identified. The rest, presumably, were harvested by
growers who didn't know they were lucky to keep their crops.

It's impossible to tell how big a dent the Pot Patrol puts in the
outdoor-growing industry. Some estimates say $6 billion worth of B.C. Bud
is grown, inside and outdoors, in this province annually. That's roughly
equal to the value of B.C.'s softwood lumber exports to the U.S.

Last year, 44,000 plants were cut down or ripped up on Vancouver Island alone.

The Pot Patrol located 3,500 plants at Qualicum within a couple of
kilometres of the new highway. Near Port Hardy were 1,200 plants so huge,
yielding a couple of pounds of bud apiece, that the police rented chainsaws
to cut through the stalks. (They usually they use machetes; clippers get
gummed up by resin.)

An outdoor operation yields just one crop a year, as opposed to three or
four for an indoor site, but comes with little risk of arrest. After
setting up on Crown land or remote forest company property, a grower who
has put in an automated watering system need only visit the site a couple
of times before harvest.

Police almost never charge anyone at an outdoor operation. Even if
convicted, growers often regard the resulting fine as little more than a
business licence. The real penalty is loss of income.

"Some people we wipe out, at least for the season," says Dennis. Sometimes,
when police find a few sites planted in an identical manner, they know
they've hurt one grower badly.

Someone will certainly regret this day's million-dollar discovery, up here
in the mid-Island clearcut. "We just spoiled some guy's trip to Mexico this
winter," says Grant as he climbs back in the helicopter. "Too bad."

Back in the air, over Texada Island, the Pot Patrol enjoys the equivalent
of the best fishing trip you ever had, getting one hit after another.

"Oh, here's a hell of a nice grow," says one voice in the headset.

"This stuff has really come up in the last couple of days," says the other.

Within minutes, they take GPS readings on four grow operations in remote,
mountainous terrain. They land to talk to a local Mountie, take off again,
and find some more plantations. Twice, Dennis and Grant simultaneously spot
separate sites.

It has become an ongoing contest between them, the one who spots the most
grow-ops winning a cup of coffee from the other. ("He cheats, always turns
the helicopter on his side to get a better view," says Grant.)

Theirs is, relative to other police work, an enjoyable task. No messy
domestic disputes. No highway carnage. Just cops and robbers, the
cat-and-mouse game between police and those who knowingly break the law.

"When you're dealing with organized crime, it's fun to win," says Grant.

Their methodology isn't terribly high-tech. They'll cruise at a few hundred
feet, paying particular attention to south-facing hills or areas near bogs
or some source of water.

Growers rarely leave large numbers of plants in the open any more.

"They're pushing into the tree line now," says Dennis.

Typically, the Pot Patrol might see a handful of clumps at a time. The
plants get easier to spot in August, when the forest turns brown and the
well-watered marijuana stands out.

The sight of the chopper does not always evoke unbridled enthusiasm. No
point in rehashing the arguments for and against legalization, but suffice
it to say that opinion is divided. As the Pot Patrol flies over Texada, one
guy races out of his house and gazes up at the helicopter circling the
plants at the edge of his property.

"Sorry, buddy, they're ours now," says Grant.

Buddy below doesn't appear to be the biggest fish in the pond, certainly
nothing like the sharks who mix marijuana cultivation with heroin dealing,
cocaine importation and prostitution. Some growers may be relatively
benign, the modern equivalent of the hillbilly with the still in the woods,
but others are big-time, big-money serious. They're the ones the police
like to think about.

Large-scale growing is a considerable investment. (The RCMP busted one man
near Campbell River recently who spent $320,000 to build a hidden bunker
under a workshop. It had a secret door that looks like a shelving unit, had
a sophisticated watering system, and was powered by two six-cylinder Volvo
engines. The grower received a nine-month conditional sentence, to be
served in the community.)

Outdoor sites may not take as much startup capital as indoor grow-ops, but
they can still cost a lot. The marijuana starter plants alone can cost $10
or $20 apiece. Some growers hire excavators to dig water traps, others use
helicopters to service remote locations.

"You have to have an organization of people who keep their mouths shut,"
says Grant.

Silence doesn't come cheap.

'If you've got a site with a thousand plants or 3,500 plants, who's got the
kind of money to set that up?" asks Const. Gus Papagiannis, the RCMP drug
awareness co-ordinator for north and central Vancouver Island. Who has the
contacts across the border, the distribution network, the supposedly
legitimate businesses through which to launder the cash? Organized crime,
that's who.

Papagiannis will give growers this much credit: "They're not shy of work."
They'll go up mountains, down cliffs and through swamps to set up in an
off-the-radar location, hauling in starter plants, bags of growing mix,
water pumps, pipes, valves, timers, fertilizer and solar panels. Like other
gardeners, they use fishing net and chicken wire to fence out deer.
All-terrain quads are the preferred method of carrying grow-gear into the
bush. On Texada, some pack stuff in on horseback.

"The startup is just as much effort as the harvest," says Papagiannis.

Universally, the growers now plant sensimilla -- seedless pot. Big, bushy
plants of the sativa strain have been cross-bred with shorter, stouter
indica plants to create a product that is supposed to be less visible from
the air. Clones are grown from clippings taken from a mother plant. Growers
discard the relatively worthless males -- no comments, please -- and plant
the rest.

"They only put in female clones," says Papagiannis.

A hot, dry summer like this doesn't mean an early harvest. It may make the
plants grow like crazy, but they won't start flowering until triggered by
the proper sun cycle. When hours of daylight decrease, plants realize they
are about to die, so try to reproduce. Females produce buds -- the only
parts of the plant in which growers are interested -- but they aren't ready
to be harvested until September. That's why machete-wielding police want to
get in by the end of August.

"There's a glut of pot on the market in October because of all the outdoor
stuff," says Papagiannis.

Some say there's a glut on the market anyway, at least in Canada. Higher
post 9/11 border security means more pot is staying in the Great Green
North, with the price per pound reportedly dropping from $2,500 to $1,500
in consequence. The Drug Enforcement Agency says the cost of B.C. Bud has
risen to $6,500 US in Los Angeles.

As long as there's money to be made, the growers will keep planting, and
the helicopters will stay in the air.