FORCES COMBINE FOR 14 DRUG RAIDS

Four thousand marijuana plants, grow equipment and almost 30 kilograms of
dried pot have been seized by RCMP at various locations in the Cowichan Valley.

Seizing the dried marijuana is equivalent to taking 90,000 joints off the
street, North Cowichan/Duncan RCMP Sgt. Derek Crawford said.

He would not give any estimated value for the haul.

The seizures follow a month-long, multi-agency "Spring 2002 Green Team"
probe involving investigators from North Cowichan/Duncan, Lake Cowichan,
Ladysmith, Shawnigan Lake RCMP detachments and members of the South Island
Highway Patrol.

Police executed 14 search warrants.

Crawford said the size of the bust is substantial but he couldn't say if
it's the largest ever made in the valley. The marijuana industry is
producing substantial amounts of high-grade product, he said. The dried pot
ready for sale was seized at a single operation.

"The nature of the businesses is that it's a cyclical ongoing thing. Every
three or four months they'll have a crop come off, and at some of the more
complex operations -- they'll have multiple crops .... These are set up to
be perpetual factories," Crawford said.

Twenty years ago people who were growing pot were usually cultivating a
little bit to sell but smoking most of it themselves, he said. Those days
are long gone.

"People who are growing and running these things are not into sales. It's
being distributed by a middle man to outside areas -- to the Lower Mainland
or even to the U.S. And there's a whole network of these things with people
having different parts of the job. It's a real subculture."

In addition to the dried marijuana and the plants, police seized 187
high-intensity lights and miscellaneous growing equipment.

Fourteen adult males and two adult females are facing a variety of charges,
including production of a controlled substance, possession for the purposes
of trafficking and theft of power from B.C. Hydro.