CHEMICAL CANADA - LAX LAWS MAKE IT EASY FOR CLUB DRUG MAKERS

VANCOUVER (CP) - 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.

"They're products that we use on a day to day basis."

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.

Chemical companies may co-operate with police, but "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 some instances, the American groups manufacture the
methamphetamine in Canada before returning to the United States with
the finished product," it says.

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.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. Customs in Washington, D.C., wouldn't
comment on Canadian laws specifically.

He said Ecstasy is imported to the United States from all over the
world, most of it from Europe.

"I think there has been more smuggling across the northern border,
actually going both ways," Boyd said. "But it's still nothing
compared to our southwest border."

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.

RCMP say Canada is also a popular entry point to North America for
designer drugs destined for the United States.

"They arrive from Europe at Dorval Airport in Montreal or Pearson
International Airport in Toronto and continue on to their U.S.
destination by land," says the report.

Most of the world's Ecstasy is produced in the Netherlands and Belgium.

"But we in the United States are seeing some labs beginning to pop up
here. . . and we have read reports and heard from our counterparts in
Canada of labs sprouting up in Canada and I think they've been having
quite a few," Boyd said.

"But again, they do not compare. . . with what the production is over
in the Netherlands."

RCMP are seeing more labs in Canada, Rintoul agreed, but said this
country is not a haven compared to the western European country.

The profit margin is high.

It costs between 50 cents and $2 to produce an Ecstasy tablet that
sells for $35 to $40.

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.

A company in Quebec and another in Ontario offer complete GHB
manufacturing kits, according to police, and the drug is growing in
popularity.

One of the ingredients for GHB, sodium hydroxide, is sold in grocery
stores as caustic soda or lye.

"They're taking that?" was the shocked reaction of one chemist who
says the ingredients are easy to obtain, although certainly not safe
to consume.

"It's extremely dangerous. . . . Enough of it could cause you to
dissolve, virtually."