ILLEGAL DRUG-MAKING BOOMING IN CANADA

Canada is becoming a safe haven for manufacturing designer club drugs like
Ecstasy because the country lacks laws to control the sale of the chemical
ingredients for those drugs, according to an internal RCMP report.

Some drugs "such as methamphetamine, you can get all the ingredients at
London Drugs, Canadian Tire, Revy, Home Depot - you can get it all and you
do not need a chemical background," said Cpl. Scott Rintoul of the RCMP
drug services section in Vancouver.

Recipes are available on the Internet and Canada's lack of regulations on
the sale of chemicals allows traffickers to purchase the ingredients
openly, according to a criminal intelligence brief prepared for the RCMP
last December and obtained by The Canadian Press using the access to
information law.

"Most of these guys are pretty creative portraying themselves as legitimate
people requiring these chemicals," Rintoul said.

U.S.-based manufacturers are taking advantage of this hole in Canadian law,
says the report.

In the United States, these chemical precursors are far more strictly
controlled.

"Say you had one or two or three chemicals, the required ingredients to
make Ecstasy or MDMA, then in the States you could be charged but in Canada
you can't," Rintoul said.

In 1996, just over 1,000 Ecstasy pills were seized entering Canada. By 2000
that number had risen to 1.5 million.

The increase is due in part to increased intelligence on smuggling but also
to increased importation, says the report.

In Quebec, PCP is a popular drug, manufactured in laboratories in Quebec
City that are controlled by outlaw motorcycle gangs, according to the report.

Methamphetamine is more prevalent in western Canada, manufactured by
independent "entrepreneurs" and motorcycle gangs.

Gamma hydroxy butyrate is particularly easy to produce because it is made
from common household chemicals. One of the ingredients is sold in grocery
stores as caustic soda.