INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED INTO SALE OF 'POPPERS'

Health Canada launched an investigation Monday into a Delta company
that is marketing an illegal and potentially deadly drug to customers
around the world.

The announcement follows a report in Saturday's Vancouver Sun
detailing how AAA Packaging of Delta markets and distributes a
chemical called isobutyl nitrite -- known as "poppers" among adherents
- -- to customers who feel it enhances sex. The company's directors
include Tony Perry, a longtime marketer of pornography in B.C.

The other director is Henry Lunn, who promotes his chemical by
sponsoring the Mr. B.C. Leather contest, the province's premier social
event for gay leather fetishists. Critics in the AIDS activist
community complain that the drug promotes the spread of AIDS, causes
health problems on its own and, taken in conjunction with Viagra, can
cause death.

The chemical is illegal in Canada and the U.S. for sale or use as a
drug, but it is legal for non-drug industrial use, even though the
substance has limited industrial applications and no recognized
Canadian chemical company produces it.

Sid Ansari, a compliance officer with Health Canada in Vancouver, said
his department has known for some time that AAA Packaging sold the
chemical in vials labeled "leather cleaner" or "video-head cleaner."

While investigators suspected that the labels were designed merely to
circumvent laws restricting the chemical, Health Canada's legal
advisers have said that "in the absence of any drug claim really those
types of products fall through the cracks" of existing legislation,
Ansari said.

However, The Sun found that the chemical was also being marketed by
AAA Packaging and other affiliated companies over the Internet as a
mood-altering drug.

"The investigation is going on, as a result of your article, we have
given a priority because some more sites have come to our attention
from your article and we have an inspector working on this and we will
be getting a legal opinion on the sale of these products and go from
there," Ansari said.

"Now that we know that they have a product which could be classified
as a drug ... we're getting all the information that is available on
the Web sites and all the advertisements and we are pushing towards a
solution to see where we can take action," he added.

Documents obtained by The Sun show that U.S. Customs seized several
shipments of goods from AAA Packaging which had been exported to the
U.S. in 1998. Laboratory tests determined that the goods -- labeled
variously as "Rush," "Z-Best Leather Cleaner" and "Blue Thunder Video
Head Cleaner" -- contained isobutyl nitrite.

AAA Packaging hired a New York City law firm called Siegel, Handell
and Davidson to get the goods returned.

The law firm wrote a letter April 16, 1998 to the U.S. Customs Service
saying the shipment was supposed to be sent to Japan, where it is
legal, but was "erroneously coded" by an inexperienced employee and
inadvertently sent to the states.

"While AAA does not dispute that the products contain isobutyl
nitrite," the law firm wrote, the goods should be returned because
they were not intended for human consumption and shipped in error.

Customs did not buy the argument.

A Customs investigator checked with the research laboratory of the
Leather Industry of America which told Customs the chemical isobutyl
was not recognized as a leather cleaner.

The goods were destroyed under U.S. law, and AAA Packaging's U.S.
shipper in Blaine,Washington received a visit from an investigator
with that country's Consumer Product Protection Commission who seized
all of it's shipping records.

Customers in the U.S. were advised by mail that the product they were
importing from Delta was illegal, but the U.S. consumer protection
commission notes in internal documents that the goods are still
arriving in that country.

A search of the Internet finds companies registered as doing business
at the same address as AAA Packaging offer to mail isobutyl nitrite
products to customers. The goods distributed by AAA Packaging are also
marketed by overseas affiliates, including the Three A Company of
Urawa City, Japan; SA & Overseas of Johannesburg, South Africa; and by
four different companies in Amsterdam.