U.S. VS. THEM

Canada's Pot Feeds U.S. Habit

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- There are two obvious clues something
strange is going on in this drab little house across from an elementary school.

One is the skunk-like smell. The other is the electric bill.

"Right now they're drawing 16,000 kilowatts," said Sgt. Tom Cork. "That's
five times what the average house uses."

Time to call in the Growbusters.

Shortly after 9 a.m., Cork and five other Vancouver police officers loudly
announce themselves, pile through the front door as it opens a crack and
handcuff three Vietnamese men inside. Wearing a gas mask, one officer pries
open the locked basement door with a crowbar and heads downstairs.

Outside, it is cold. Down here, it is like a sweltering day in the tropics.

High-intensity lamps consuming huge amounts of electricity illuminate a
startling scene: dozens and dozens of bushy marijuana plants. This is the
famed B.C. Bud, prized by pot smokers from Los Angeles to New York.

In homes and warehouses all over British Columbia, people are growing tons
of B.C. Bud, most of it destined to be smuggled into the United States. The
demand is so great police estimate there are as many as 10,000 growing
operations in Vancouver alone.

By the end of the day, the Growbusters will have raided four houses and
destroyed 995 plants, enough to produce $1-million worth of B.C. Bud.

But for every "grow-op" they bust, the cops know that hundreds more will
survive. The insatiable hunger for marijuana in the United States, combined
with the minor penalties in Canada, makes it two steps back for every one
step forward.

[Times photo: Susan Taylor Martin] As police raid a house in Vancouver, a
sign outside gives a phone number neighbors can call to report other
marijuana growing operations.

The United States and Canada are as friendly as any two countries on Earth.
Each is the other's biggest trading partner, and they share the world's
longest undefended border.

But when it comes to illegal drugs crossing that border, the two nations
don't always see eye to eye.

The U.S. government criticizes Canada, especially its courts, for not doing
more to curb the international drug trade.

"Canadian courts have been reluctant to impose tough sentences, reflecting
a widespread view that drugs are a "victimless' crime and should be treated
primarily as a health issue," the U.S. State Department said in its most
recent report on global drug trends.

"Sentencing guidelines, together with stronger judicial and public support,
would increase the impact of Canada's law enforcement efforts and create a
stronger deterrent to transnational crime."

But many Canadians counter that the United States' punitive approach has
clearly failed to curb Americans' appetite for marijuana.

"They don't seem to have a handle on their own problems," Robert Metzer, a
chief judge in British Columbia, told a Vancouver newspaper. "I don't see
why they should be criticizing us for ours."

Up to 75 percent of the marijuana grown in British Columbia is headed for
the United States. Despite strong cooperation between U.S. and Canadian
authorities, customs agents intercept little of it.

"I can safely say we are not getting most of it," said Roy Hoffman,
resident agent of the U.S. Customs Service in Blaine, Wash., the busiest
port of entry between the two countries. "It continues to cross the border
in significant quantities, and I can't say that I see a reduction in the
amount of marijuana that's waiting to be smuggled."

So lucrative is the trade that smugglers have included airline pilots, a
medical student and vacationing senior citizens who hid the marijuana in
the water tank of their RV. While small-scale smugglers can get several
months in jail in the United States, even large-scale smugglers might get
just a year if caught on the Canadian side of the border.

One reason for the disparities is that Canadian judges have far more
discretion than their U.S. counterparts, who often are bound by tough
mandatory sentencing rules adopted at the height of the U.S. drug war.

Canadian courts also have looked askance at drug arrests resulting from
stings and other police techniques that are common in the United States but
considered violations of civil rights in Canada.

"The courts have been very skeptical about using very strong criminal
sanctions in relation to cannabis," said Neil Boyd, a criminologist at
Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

"In Canada, the majority of well-educated people just don't see this to be
as serious a threat as alcohol or tobacco abuse, and if you don't see it to
be as significant a threat, why are we using criminal law to control it?"

According to a recent poll, 47 percent of Canadians favor legalizing
marijuana, a big jump from the 30 percent level that persisted from the mid
'70s to the mid '90s. The increased public support stems partly from the
"legitimization" marijuana has received as a result of recent court cases
and actions by Health Canada, a government agency that coordinates drug policy.

Last year, an Ontario court gave the government until July 31, 2001, to
revamp regulations for medical use of marijuana or have the entire section
of Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act invalidated. That would
have made any use of marijuana legal in Canada.

In response, Health Canada decided to make it easier for patients with
AIDS, cancer and other diseases to get marijuana, which some studies have
shown relieves pain and nausea. The Canadian Parliament has formed a
committee of all five political parties to explore decriminalizing
marijuana for even non-medical use.

The United States opposes any loosening of Canada's marijuana laws, fearing
it would increase the drug trade and encourage even more marijuana use by
Americans.

But even the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police supports the idea.
Decriminalizing marijuana possession would free police and prosecutors to
tackle far more serious crimes, they say, including rape, robbery and murder.

"Leaders here really haven't tried to milk the drug scare, and in the media
we've had some very balanced programs about more humane approaches to drug
use," said Patricia Erickson, a University of Toronto criminologist and
expert on drug use and abuse.

"I think in the States people have gotten a more one-sided view than
Canadians."

Still, Erickson doubts Canada will decriminalize marijuana possession while
its powerful neighbor continues to take such a hard-line against the drug.
The U.S. approach, she said, makes Canada's underground market for
marijuana so lucrative that it is increasingly controlled by organized
crime rings not afraid to use violence.

Erickson said: "An aggressive prohibition supports aggressive suppliers."

In halting English, the Vietnamese tell the Growbusters squad that they are
fishermen who know nothing about all that marijuana growing underneath them
in the locked basement.

In fact, police say the men are part of an Asian crime ring that runs most
of the grow-ops in Vancouver. In the suburbs and rural areas, motorcycle
gangs have muscled in on British Columbia's billion-dollar-a-year marijuana
trade.

Between them, the rival groups "control 85 percent of the production and
distribution of B.C. Bud," said Inspector Kash Heed, head of the Vancouver
police drug section. "This is not a mom-and-pop operation."

Although marijuana is grown elsewhere in Canada (Quebec Gold is especially
popular), several factors make Vancouver a leading production center for
U.S.-bound drugs. A major port, it has miles of unguarded coastline (ideal
for smuggling) and thousands of Asian immigrants (many were farmers back
home). Like cities along the U.S. West Coast, Vancouver traditionally has
been more tolerant of marijuana use than more conservative inland areas.

Marijuana lovers jokingly call it "Vansterdam," after the Dutch city where
users can smoke pot in coffee shops. Vancouver police rarely arrest those
with small amounts of marijuana, and even tourist magazines in luxury
hotels tout "Vancouver's thriving marijuana industry."

Although substantial indoor "grow-ops" started springing up several years
ago, it took many citizen complaints before Vancouver police created the
Growbusters in January 2000. Neighbors were griping about houses with
barred windows, strange goings-on at odd hours and the acrid odor of
marijuana wafting down the street.

It soon became evident that a good part of Vancouver's rental housing stock
was devoted to growing B.C. Bud.

"We had a mansion on the west side of Vancouver, three stories, beautiful
house on a hill," said Cork, head of the Growbusters.

Typically, the owner is unaware of what his tenants plan or turns a blind
eye when they offer to pay a year's rent in advance. The basements are
outfitted with high-intensity lamps, huge fans and hydroponic equipment so
the plants can be grown in water instead of dirt. The growers, usually
middle-aged Vietnamese men recruited in karaoke clubs, are offered a place
to live rent-free and a small cut of any profits.

At the first house the Growbusters raid this Thursday morning, school
photos and a homework assignment sheet show that children are living here,
too. It is an unhealthy environment: The hot, humid conditions foster
buildups of mold so irritating to the respiratory system that police wear
gas masks when they enter.

Most of the houses are firetraps. Because the lamps and other equipment
draw so much electricity, growers cut directly into the power supply to
bypass the electric meter. They disconnect the stoves so they can use that
220-volt power source, cooking instead on portable propane stoves.

"From a fire and electrical standpoint, these houses are quite literally
time bombs," a report on the Growbusters warned.

After electricians cut the power, officers hack down the plants with hedge
trimmers and remove the growing equipment. The police can't find the keys
to the basement, so there is no way to prove in court that the Vietnamese
knew about the plants. The men are sent on their way and told not to come
back; a social worker is dispatched to the nearby school to see if she can
find the children.

Finally, police nail the front door shut and post a "NOT SAFE TO OCCUPY"
notice. To get his house back, the owner will have to pay for repairs and
inspections.

The marijuana plants are rooted in growing mediums like this and raised
hydroponically, eliminating the need for messy, hard-to-handle dirt.

"We phone them, they come over and they're devastated," Cork said of the
owners. "You have to create a tropical climate and the humidity causes
damage. The last guy, it cost him $15,000, $20,000 to repair."

With the light penalties, there is little to deter either the growers or
the crime rings that hire them. One pound of B.C. Bud sells for as much as
$6,000 in California and $8,000 in New York. Just 50 plants can produce a
profit of $200,000 a year.

As grow-ops continue to pop up all over town, Vancouver police are
rethinking their strategy. One school of thought says it is enough to shut
down as many of them as possible, even if few arrests are made. However,
Heed, head of the drug section, thinks the best way to attack the problem
is by striking at the crime rings.

But he knows that eradicating the drug entirely, as the United States would
like, is impossible.

"The way I look at it, it seems the United States really targets the supply
part of it and Canada is trying to address the demand part of it. I'm right
in the middle."