A TRIP TO 'VANSTERDAM'

The Laid-Back Attitude About Marijuana Use In Vancouver, B.C., Contrasts
Starkly With The Position Of U.S. Officials, Who Report A Growing Problem
With Drug Smuggling From The Province

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- After work, James strolled inside a crowded Hastings
Street cafe in his sage-green stockbroker's suit, pulled out a bud the size
of a golf ball, broke it up and rolled a joint as casually as if he were
shelling pistachios.

Like a wine expert who knows everything about his favorite vintage, James
knew exactly what marijuana he was smoking: "MC-9, a strain of skunk bud
No. 3." He also could describe exactly how it was grown and how it made him
feel. "It does the body good." He exhaled. "It gives you wobbly legs."

James danced in place, then passed the joint to Robert, a construction
worker he just met. They shared another joint and raved about how wonderful
it was to smoke pot in public without fearing arrest -- although their
puffing was still illegal, which is why they asked that their last names
not be published.

At first glance, this recent 6 p.m. crowd at Blunt Brothers cafe looked
like any happy hour in North America -- except the smoke smelled different,
there was no alcohol, and nobody was boisterous.

Until fire gutted it recently, Blunt's -- its motto: "A respectable joint"
- -- was the centerpiece of a gritty half-block strip of Vancouver that has
earned the city the nickname "Vansterdam" and inspired High Times magazine
to crown it the world's best tourist getaway for pot enthusiasts.

The strip, which doubles as headquarters for Canada's movement to legalize
marijuana, is the product of a gentlemen's agreement with police that
allows pot smoking as long as there is no dealing or other drug use.

But it frosts U.S. drug czar John Walters, who sees Hastings Street as
alarming proof of a lax attitude that has turned British Columbia into one
of North America's marijuana growing and smuggling hotspots.

Marijuana seizures tripled along the northern border during the past three
years, as did the U.S. forces charged with intercepting the illicit herb.
Still, B.C.'s motorcycle and ethnic gangs continue to pour high-quality pot
into the Northwest by car, truck, plane, boat, backpack and snowmobile. In
February, a 16-year-old American girl was caught sneaking 8 pounds across
the border in her school bus.

Two weeks ago, Walters accused Canada of flooding the United States with
potent "B.C. bud," branding it the "crack" cocaine of marijuana. Yet,
America's war on drugs remains an abstraction in a city where even the
mayor openly favors legalizing pot.

With Blunt Brothers in ashes -- police suspect arson -- Vancouver's public
pot party moved just a few doors down Hastings Street, past the B.C.
Marijuana Party bookstore and the headquarters for Pot-TV to the New
Amsterdam Cafe.

More than half of the customers at that cafe -- the "Munchies" menu
includes sandwiches and wraps -- come from Washington, Oregon and other
states, said Stewart McKay, the manager.

"I've had so many people from Portland ask me, 'Why can't you go to the
states and do this?' " McKay said. "I tell them I'm scared as hell of
George Bush. You guys are police states, in my mind."

Interpreting the laws

U.S. and Canadian marijuana laws look similar. It's the way politicians,
police and judges view them that is vastly different.

Canadians busted for growing or possessing marijuana rarely serve jail
time, and many national politicians favor softer laws. In 2002, a Canadian
Senate panel concluded the drug should be legal. It didn't happen, but
Canada is soon expected to decriminalize pot such that possessing fewer
than 15 grams will simply be a fine of $80 (U.S.) or more.

By contrast, the United States' war on drugs includes an aggressive
anti-pot campaign driven by studies suggesting pot, not alcohol, is the top
drug treatment issue among Americans younger than 18.

One illustration of the nations' different mind-sets: the way medicinal
marijuana is handled.

In Washington and Oregon, state and physician-approved patients acquire
medicinal pot by growing their own or through networks of approved patients
or growers. There are no clinics or pharmacies where they can simply and
legally pick up, much less smoke, their medicine.

And while the U.S. government continues to challenge state medical
marijuana laws, Canada intends to make pot available in pharmacies,
starting with a pilot project later this year in British Columbia.

In Vancouver, the medicinal marijuana scene is already a pot-lover's fantasy.

The first thing patients see when they enter the B.C. Compassion Club is
the daily marijuana menu. Choices on a recent day included Queen Jane,
Juicy Fruit, Time Warp and Sugarloaf -- a bud that is a mixture of indica
and sativa strains that purportedly provides "digestive, relax, pain
relief" at $9 a gram.

There also are two types of hash -- Moroccan Gold and Bumblebee -- as well
as cannabis-infused butter and olive oil or Bill's Banana Bread. Beautiful
Brownies sell for $4 each.

The club has rooms for massage, acupuncture, counseling and more, but the
busiest is the smoking lounge, where puffers included a part-time waiter
with HIV, a high-rise window washer with nerve damage in his leg and a
mechanic undergoing chemotherapy.

At one point, a distraught Katherine Slieker wheeled into the lounge on her
scooter. "I had chemo today, and I don't have any money for pot," she
lamented, her head and hand shaking.

After sorting out how to buy a gram, Slieker shared a pipe load with her
hip-damaged boyfriend and explained that marijuana accomplishes what other
multiple sclerosis drugs can't. "It takes my mind off it, and allows me to
be a normal person," she said. "This place is a godsend, an absolute godsend."

When lounge discussion turned to national health insurer Health Canada's
plans to make marijuana grown by government contractors available in
pharmacies, Slieker demurred: "It's crappy pot."

"I wouldn't even bake with it," added Hilary Black, who founded the
Compassion Club seven years ago at age 21. It annoys Black that she has to
buy most of the marijuana for patients on the black market. Yet police have
never bothered her or the club, which sells pot to patients at about half
its street value.

About 20 percent of the club's 2,700 registered patients live in the
States, Black said. She gets bombarded with calls from Americans who want
her to mail them pot -- something she won't do.

Huge cash crop

Mike Littlejohn, a team leader for the Organized Crime Association in
British Columbia, said it's hard for Canadians to grasp the dark side of
the marijuana bonanza. Pot farms used to be mom-and-pot operations, he
said, but the industry is now huge. Some put the trade at $5 billion a
year, surpassing British Columbia agriculture.

"Until we educate the public on how bad this is, there will always be the
nudge-nudge, wink-wink, it's-just-kiddy-dope response," Littlejohn said.
"People can laugh at it until, gee, the guy down the street was murdered in
a grow-operation ring."

Littlejohn, who works undercover, said it's hard to overstate the role the
pot trade plays in organized crime. A recent bust charged local Hell's
Angels with conspiring to smuggle $20 million worth of B.C. bud through
Indiana. Gang-related killings have spiked since 2000, along with an
abundance of unsolved slayings and confiscated caches of automatic weapons.

U.S. border officials in Western Washington seized more than 20,000 pounds
of marijuana worth $50 million to $60 million last year. A pound of B.C.
bud sells for about $2,500 in Seattle, $2,700 in Portland and $3,100 in Los
Angeles.

U.S. officials know they are intercepting but a fraction of the pot
crossing the border, which is largely a fenceless, invisible seam. "The
geography lends itself to smuggling. It always has," said Peter Ostrovsky,
a special agent with the U.S. Homeland Security Department in Bellingham, Wash.

He points to July 11, when five randomly searched boats along a trafficking
corridor between Vancouver and the San Juan Islands turned up 20 pounds of
cocaine headed north and 450 pounds of B.C. bud headed south.

"This is definitely the new frontier for our agency," Ostrovsky said. His
Canadian counterparts are helpful, he said, but Canadian courts don't
always back them up. "I think there's a lack of judicial will."

Contrasting attitudes

Canadian attitudes about pot are akin to those in the United States 30
years ago.

Jack Layton, head of Canada's New Democratic Party, seemingly even courts
the marijuana vote. Asked recently about his pot-smoking past, Layton
humored University of Waterloo students with this response: "I never
exhaled. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it."

When Walters, the U.S. drug czar, visited Vancouver in December 2002 to air
his concerns about B.C.'s marijuana industry, local police showed him the
city's pot cafes. Walters made it clear he was appalled.

Kash Heed, the Vancouver police inspector who led Walters around, said
police continue to focus on more important issues than the recreational
smokers at places like the Hastings Street strip.

The strip bustled on a recent day.

A steady stream of customers came to Emery Seeds, which offers more than
400 varieties. For $40, buyers could get 10 seeds of Oregon Purple Thai,
described as a "trippy euphoric high, very strong medicine."

Downstairs, pot activist and self-described "idea guy" David Malmo-Levine
asserted that marijuana is simply "the best stimulation, relaxation and
euphoria for your dollar." He also accused soccer moms and others of being
"euphoraphobic."

Across the room, Chris Bennett, director of Pot-TV, which offers online
activist programming, was busy collecting pot memorabilia, including
1,000-year-old hash pipes, for a marijuana museum project.

The financier for Pot-TV, the bookstore and much of the legalization
movement is seed tycoon Marc Emery, aka "The Prince of Pot," who on a
recent speaking tour across Canada denounced the proposed decriminalization
plan as inadequate.

Emery routinely smokes pot in front of police stations and insists
marijuana is legal in Canada even though his lawyer, John Conroy, concedes
that he's wrong. Conroy lost an argument last year before the Canadian
Supreme Court in which he asserted marijuana should be legal because
there's not enough proof it harms anyone.

Gathering spot gone

Some Vancouver cafes other than the New Amsterdam also allow varying levels
of pot smoking. And many people feel comfortable puffing cannabis on city
streets and in parks, although they stress that they "respect the police"
by not smoking it in front of them.

Still, it may be hard for Vancouver's pot culture to swiftly replace the
ambience of Blunt Brothers, which thrived nightly until it burned April 25.

Blunt's crowd on one of its final nights included a Vietnam draft dodger,
an actor/musician from Chicago, students from Germany and Holland, a couple
of middle-aged Texans with bloodshot eyes and a lot of locals.

"Most of us work 9 to 5 jobs," said Brent, a Blunt's regular for three
years. "We don't make much, but we've got jobs." Brent claimed that he once
saw a Vancouver cop step inside Blunt's to use the ATM and that he's seen
American celebrities there, too.

An hour later, the music was turned off and Blunt's quieted. Brent, with a
freshly lit joint, and just about everybody else, turned their full
attention to the big screen overhead.

A Canucks hockey game? No -- "The Simpsons" were on.

News researcher Gail Hulden contributed to this report.