CONTRABAND IN THE MAIL

Inspectors Find Everything From Spiders To Stun Guns

VANCOUVER - Twenty live tarantulas.

An electric stun gun that looks like a flashlight.

Bags of opium in a hollowed-out book.

These are three examples of the 800 seizures made by Canada Customs last
year at the main Georgia Street post office in downtown Vancouver.

In restricted-access areas inspectors use everything from X-ray machines to
drug-sniffing dogs to examine six million pieces of mail coming into B.C.
annually from other countries.

They are looking for the proverbial needle in that massive haystack of mail
- -- prohibited weapons, illegal drugs, counterfeit knockoffs of designer
clothes, beef from countries where mad cow disease has been identified.

Mike Hryciuk, acting chief of the Canada Customs mail centre, won't
describe all the tools Customs officers use when they decide what warrants
a closer look.

But he did describe some of the things in that box of tools: An ion scan
machine that electronically "sniffs" mail to detect tiny quantities of
illicit narcotics, such as heroin, cocaine and THC, the drug produced by
marijuana plants; "detector dogs" trained to find those illegal drugs, and
x-ray machines that peer through packages and outline metallic objects inside.

Hryciuk said customs officers also use "indicators" that help them identify
mail that is most likely to contain contraband. Without elaborating, he
indicated that those indicators include the written declaration or customs
form placed on the outside of packages mailed to Canada; information
provided by the importer or exporter; the way the goods are packaged; and
the country of origin.

Less than 10 per cent of the incoming mail -- less than 600,000 of the six
million pieces of Canada-bound mail coming into the main Vancouver post
office -- is referred to Canada Customs for further examination. That's
when things like x-ray machines and dogs are used.

Referrals often happen simply because officials suspect the sender did not
pay all the import duties to Canada Customs, perhaps because the item may
be undervalued or inaccurately described on the declaration form.

Other items of mail are sent to another federal government agency. For
instance, one of the seized items last year contained a product which
resembled a child's pacifier, but it was pacifier with a battery-powered
light. Health Canada doesn't want to see that in a baby's mouth. It's used
by young adults at rave concerts. Environment Canada also tries to enforce
the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora, which restricts or bans importation of animal products and live
animals that are headed for extinction, such as all elephants, many monkeys
and all sea turtles.

Hryciuk said about 200,000 pieces of mail were opened last year.

Canada Customs seized a relatively small percentage of those opened
envelopes and packages -- 800 in all -- but Hryciuk said "thousands" of
other pieces of mail were referred to other government agencies or sent
back to the sender.

Last year, more than 500 of those Canada Customs seizures were letters and
packages with illegal drugs inside. It won't come as a surprise that
cocaine, heroin, opium, cannabis products and steroids are some of the
illicit drugs Canada Customs officers find, but many people haven't heard
of restricted drugs like kaht, a plant grown in East Africa.

Hryciuk said drug smugglers try anything they can to conceal drugs -- in
hollowed-out books, packaging materials, in DVD and cassette containers,
inside fabric buttons, toothpaste tubes, a bag of coffee.

The second-largest category of items seized in Vancouver last year was
restricted or prohibited weapons. Almost 100 were seized by Canada Customs.

Officers found no firearms but they seized switchblade knives, a crossbow,
stun guns, plastic replicas of small, automatic assault rifles,
knife-edged, metal throwing weapons, a weapon called a nunchaku, which
consists of two wooden or rigid cylinders connected in the middle by a
metal chain.

"Anything you can think of, you can find in the mail," said Gerry Kennedy,
superintendent of the Canada Customs enforcement unit at the post office --
including the 20 live tarantulas.

Kennedy said the critters came in a package from Cambodia. Although the
package didn't have the proper documents, investigators later determined
the tarantulas were being legally imported, so they were given to the
intended recipient.

"They scared the heck out of me, but these [customs officers] see that kind
of thing day in and day out," he said.