JAILED POT CZAR BLAMES LAW FOR HIS EMPIRE'S RUIN

Surrey's Don Briere was one of the province's largest growers of B.C.
bud until he was busted on March 12, 1999. Briere, who was sentenced
to four years in prison last Wednesday, blames his misfortunes on the
fact pot is illegal.

Talking with Don Briere is like watching a handful of ball bearings
hit a granite floor from a great height -- it's hard to keep track of
all the caroming pieces.

So when Briere looks back on his days as one of B.C.'s busiest
businessmen he remembers it like this: A whirlwind of ringing phones;
deals that soared or fell through; doors that were kicked in;
juggling up to 34 "job sites" at one time; dealing with 80 often
difficult "co-workers" -- and being constantly on the lookout for
police, ripoff artists and irate landlords.

Briere was one of the province's largest growers of B.C. bud until he
was busted March 12, 1999.

"At the present time it's the largest one before the courts," said
RCMP Cpl. John Ibbotson, who was in charge of the probe.

"There is no precedents that have gone through the British Columbia
court system with this volume of marijuana."

By the time of his arrest, Briere had been in the business for eight
years. Police found 113 kilograms of dried marijuana in various
containers worth an estimated $650,000 and $50,000 in grow equipment
in his Surrey warehouse. They also found $300,000 in cash in his
Surrey home and evidence he owned interests in property around B.C.

Briere talks in a rapid-fire scattering of ideas, bouncing from one
thought to the next without pause. But unknotting his woolly stories
can produce interesting insights into the life of a drug kingpin.

Just before his sentencing, he told The Province he ran up to 34
grow-ops, or "job sites," employing some 80 people, mostly in the
Lower Mainland.

On average, each rented house held 16 1,000-watt lights, with 25
plants per light, growing in dirt under intense care. "The goal was a
pound of bud per 1,000-watt light every 60 days," said Briere.

A pound of his high-quality, dried indoor B.C. bud was worth on
average $2,500. He was looking at $20,000 per month per house, minus
expenses.

Even admitting this much, Briere, a father of five, a grandfather of
six, still maintains he's a good, hard-working businessman who just
happens to be on the wrong side of the law.

A law, he says vehemently, that should be changed.

"I'm a decent person, a family man. I'm a non-violent, hard-working
Canadian," he said in his newish $320,000 home in a standard
subdivision. It may soon be sold to meet financial obligations to the
court.

"Pot is not the great evil. If they would have legalized marijuana
like everyone has recommended, none of this would have happened to
me. I would never have been charged in the first place."

Briere pleaded guilty to five counts: Production of marijuana,
possession for the purpose of trafficking, the unsafe storage of
ammunition, unsafe storage of a firearm and laundering $2.3 million.
He had originally been charged with more than 15 counts.

Briere was sentenced in Surrey provincial court last Wednesday to
four years in prison and was restricted from owning weapons for 15
years. He also forfeited some property to the Crown.

Twenty-one others arrested with him were previously handed relatively
minor penalties. Except for Glen Cuthbert Finch, a pilot who worked
with Briere, flying his home-made plane, filled with pot, into the
U.S.

Unlike Briere, who lived relatively modestly, Finch liked his toys.
Police seized a Harley-Davidson Softail motorcycle, a Porsche 911,
$250,000 worth of contents from his lavish south Surrey home,
including a Jeep, three speedboats and $50,000 in wine from his
cellar.

He was handed a three-year sentence and also forfeited his expensive
lakefront home in Osoyoos.

On Wednesday, provincial court Judge Gurmail Gill said Briere was the
"directing mind" behind what police called the largest pot ring
busted in B.C.

"He was at the top or very near the top," of the ring, said Gill. "It
would appear that he was in the business for some time."

Briere, who said his wife and family thought he was in the
restoration business, still faces the wrath of the Canadian Customs
and Revenue Agency, which wants $1.3 million in unpaid taxes.

"I've worked hard all my life," he said of his tax woes. "I always
paid my taxes, maybe not enough . . . now they've taken everything."

As he was led away in handcuffs, his wife wept quietly in court. And
outside, a handful of supporters spoke against the sentence.

"The federal government is totally out of touch with the people,"
said John West, who described himself as a "reverend brother of the
Church of the Universe," which uses marijuana as a "sacrament."

And Michael Hansen, of the Canadian Hemp Grower's Association, said
he was "outraged" by the sentence. "Justice has not been served," he
said.

Briere believes in his right to grow and market marijuana so strongly
he ran for the Marijuana Party of B.C. in Surrey-Tynehead during the
last provincial election even though he'd been charged. He drove the
riding in a converted school bus -- dubbed the Cannibus.

"I had to think long and hard about running," Briere, 50, said. "I
really do believe in this with all my heart. It would have made me a
hypocrite if I didn't run."

Briere polled 385 votes.

Given the smallest opening, he turns the conversation to legalization
and the abuse he feels he's suffered at the hands of the law.

"I really do feel my rights have been violated, both as a person and
as a taxpayer. If we have the right to smoke tobacco and drink
alcohol, we should have the right to smoke pot, too. This would not
have happened if marijuana was legalized."

And even as he sat in the public gallery waiting for his sentencing
to begin, Briere pointed out the industry already provides a
multibillion-dollar boost to the B.C. economy. If legalized, he said,
it would contribute even more.

"We have to legalize it so we can tax it," he said.

Gill said Briere appeared proud of his dope-growing business.

"It would appear that he took some pride in his organizational
abilities," said Gill.

Briere, unrepentant to the core, agreed with that assessment.

"I guess I was one of the biggest. I knew of bigger. I was good at
what I was doing," he said.

But it was no walk in the park.

"There's a whole industry at work here. It's like the real world, but
covert," Briere said. "There's electricians, plumbers, drywallers,
carpenters, carpet layers, gardeners, drivers, labourers."

All of the details kept in his head.

"It was mind-boggling, keeping it all in my head. I had three phones
going at once and I would never use my own phone to phone a job site,
only a pay phone."

Briere, who left school in Grade 9, is a former logger, millworker,
construction worker and nightclub owner. He was married at age 16 and
then again at 38.

He said he started growing dope while working for others when
employment dried up. He was a fast and eager student.

"It's like anything else, if you're willing to work hard you can
become successful. If you're eager to learn it's pretty basic and
simple."

But not easy.

"It's not what it's cracked up to be," said Briere, who started
smoking pot at 14 and gave up drinking 10 years ago.

"It was really hard, really long hours and lots of work, 12- to
14-hour days, six days a week. I never took any holidays, I was
scared to go away. It's a tough racket."

And dangerous.

"You could be robbed or murdered, all kinds of things could happen to
you," said Briere. "I can't tell you how many times I was robbed. But
what can you do, go to the police?"

Briere set up the grow houses, investing $15,000 to $20,000 in each
operation. The house would be rented, often by people on welfare, and
often by couples, who worked with him.

"The absolute rule was that there had to be someone in the house all
the time," Briere explained. "It was a matter of security. You're not
going to put that much money in and then have it ripped off.

"We were worried more about robbers than the cops."

They would split the take fifty-fifty. The renters paying for rent,
Briere taking care of the operational side and other expenses. "It
was like they were operating a small business for themselves. It's
free enterprise."

He employed electricians and plumbers to set up the houses, teams to
plant and to clip and dry. People to drive and to clean up. Even
teams to restore the houses once the operation was finished.

"We had people looking full time for houses," he said. "They are hard
to find. I've seen people in bidding wars on some houses."

Briere said he used only a few rooms in any given house and always
ensured that the house was restored.

"People were like begging me to set them up in business. I had to
turn them down," he said, adding that everywhere he went in B.C.
"people were growing pot."

A house could be set up in days and taken down in eight hours as was
often necessary if the grow-op was compromised.

"This was really good for the economy," said Briere, ever the
proselytizer. "When we bought supplies, electrical equipment, plant
food, dirt, good old B.C. lumber, paint, the vehicles we drove, the
houses we rented, it all went back into the economy."

Briere also bought some homes and acreages in order to set up
grow-ops -- the courts saw this as money-laundering, Briere sees it
as good business practice.

Certainly, he ran a sophisticated operation where select "mother"
plants were harvested for "babies" that were supplied throughout the
chain. His warehouse acted as the nerve centre.

Briere said he sold his pot to others who delivered it to market. He
said he didn't work with the Hells Angels, or ethnic gangs, and
claimed he didn't care to know the details of the distribution
network.

Even so, he lived always on guard.

"You're always watching for the robbers, you're always watching for
the police, you're always watching for the landlord," said Briere,
who suffered two heart attacks since his arrest. "Talk about a hard
business."

And at the back of his mind, always, was the knowledge the whole
enterprise could come crashing down.

"I hoped I wouldn't be caught," he said with a slight shrug.

"But I always knew it was a house of cards, that it could collapse at
any time."

The collapse began when police were tipped in October 1998 by someone
in 100 Mile House. The probe led to the Lower Mainland and to Surrey.

"It was a highly unusual case in that we were able to trace the
marijuana all the way from its origin to the storage and ultimately
how it was exported into the United States," said Cpl. Ibbotson.

An unusual and tragic twist to Briere's drug involvement is the death
of his 24-year-old son who died of a heroin overdose. Instead of
turning Briere from drugs, his death reinforced his idea that drugs
should be legalized.

Briere's logic is that the criminal element would disappear and crime
rates would drop, freeing more money for detox centres. Education
would be increased to teach kids not to take drugs.

"We need to educate our children that too much alcohol, pot, sugar,
driving too fast, all are bad for you," he said.

"There was nothing there to help my son. We need more detox centres
to help people deal with their addictions."

He doesn't see marijuana as a so-called "gateway" to harder drugs any
more than he does mother's milk or alcohol.

After his arrest, Briere started his own political party, "We the
People Party." Then he worked as a campaign manager in the federal
election for the Marijuana Party and finally ran himself provincially.

During all of this he also started Hemp Scientific International in
Delta, looking into the industrial uses for legally grown hemp.

And he applied to the federal government to grow medical-grade pot.
Looking at a newspaper picture of Health Minister Allan Rock
inspecting the first crop in Flin Flon, Man., Briere scoffs: "It
looks like terrible crap to me."

Sitting in his kitchen and contemplating his recent career, Briere
sighed, "I've been a busy boy."

Now he'll have lots of time on his hands to think about his former
career. Meanwhile, he says he's broke, the courts having taken
everything he has.

And when he comes out? Well, he founded the Canadian Sanctuary
Society in conjunction with the Marijuana Party which will raise
funds for the medical use of pot. The society was officially launched
last Tuesday, the day before he was sentenced.

"Pot's going to be legalized and when it is I'm going to be in this
business. I don't want to go into any other business, but this
business," he said.

He'll have lots of company.

Said fellow Marijuana Party member David Bourgeois after Briere's
sentencing: "In the last provincial election 50,000 B.C. residents
voted to legalize something that he just got sent to jail for."

"An awful lot of people here today are now going to go off and smoke
marijuana."

Ibbotson summed it up by saying the marijuana industry in B.C. and
across Canada is an "epidemic."