POT BATTLE FAILS TO DENT STREET PRICE

SQ Budgets $750,000 In Attempts To Nip Plantations In The Bud

Marijuana plantations have been high on the provincial police force's hit
list since 1998, when they seized and destroyed a little more than 3,000
kilos of the illicit plant.

Since 1999, when a formal marijuana crackdown plan was adopted by the
force, another 15,493 kilos of marijuana was destroyed and about 2,000 more
people were charged with criminal offences.

But the campaign - combined with busts by the RCMP and municipal police
forces - hasn't had any significant effect on the action on the street.

"The market price (for a gram of marijuana sold on the street) is still the
same ... the same as it's been for five years," Richard Bruneau, deputy
director of the Surete du Quebec's organized crime unit, told reporters
yesterday.

He was responding to questions asking how much of a dent police efforts
have put into Quebec's marijuana trade, an underground commerce that is
said to rival British Columbia's.

How could police know, Bruneau asked, saying that the only indication he
could offer was the gram-bag price, which ranges between $10 and $20
depending on the quality of the pot.

At yesterday's press conference about Operation Cisaille 2001, SQ officers
repeatedly stated that the relatively sweet marijuana growers of the 1960s
are gone.

"The world of laid-back flower-power people is over," Sgt. Jean Audette,
the SQ's drug specialist, said in an interview.

The SQ has linked four known bikers with marijuana operations but hasn't
been able to get the proof to charge them because they control from a
distance and "don't put their hands in the soup," he said.

Last year, one murder and three attempted murders were linked to the drug
trade, Audette said. In one of those incidents, a pot grower seeking to
protect about 400 plants fired a pistol at a Saint-Adolphe-de-Howard
municipal police officer. The officer's life was saved by a bulletproof vest.

Bruneau said that most, if not all, of the marijuana operations are
controlled by organized crime, especially outlaw motorcycle gangs.

One of the favourite hiding places for marijuana growers has been
cornfields but that has come under attack in large measure because growers
were intimidating farmers. After that became widely known, police aerial
surveillance increased and more farmers started informing authorities about
the unwanted trespassers.

Outdoor marijuana growers have now taken to the woods - often unused crown
lands - and the SQ has enlisted the help of all-terrain-vehicle users who
spend lots of time running logging roads and the like.

And this year, the SQ has launched a publicity campaign asking people to
inform its crime hotline about growers.

Growing operations are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Audette said.
Electricians are used to set up indoor hydroponic labs and police routinely
find new electronic gear whose use eludes them until they consult manuals.

Still big in the underground trade are hydroponic labs that use
high-density lights and potent fertilizers but last year, for the first
time, SQ officers found aeroponic laboratories, in which plants are more or
less suspended in air and their roots are misted with fertilizer-rich spray.

This year's SQ operation has a budget of $750,000 and is focusing on
stopping plantations at the ground level; police are going after nurseries
where the pot plants are cloned.

The illegal nurseries are usually in urban areas. In the last 18 months,
three nurseries were found in Greenfield Park alone.

The money is tempting, he said. One hundred fully grown marijuana plants
cultivated outdoors will yield 25 pounds, Audette said. Each pound sells
wholesale for $1,800.

A pound of hydroponically grown marijuana sells for $3,000, and 100 plants
will generate 25 pounds, he said.