LINKING HASHISH, ECSTASY VALUE TO PROPERTY CRIME 'MAKES NO SENSE'

The RCMP's decision to link a recent hashish and ecstasy seizure to
property crime "doesn't make any sense at all" a local criminologist said
Wednesday.

Officers from the RCMP's drug section announced Wednesday they had seized
more than 240 kilograms of black hashish and 100,000 ecstasy pills from a
Vancouver residence Saturday morning.

To illustrate the size of the seizure, police said in a media release that
"approximately $50,000,000 in street-level property crime would have to be
committed to finance the purchase of these illegal drugs."

(The estimate was made on the assumption that thieves usually sell items
they steal for 10 per cent of their value.)

However, while it is well established that many heroin and cocaine addicts
commit property crimes to feed their expensive habits, it is not clear to
what extent users of ecstasy and marijuana - many of whom take drugs only
occasionally - are driven to criminal behaviour.

"There's no evidence that people are committing property crime to obtain
marijuana," said Neil Boyd, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University.
"People don't use it with the same regularity as heroin or cocaine and it
doesn't create the same dependence...It doesn't make any sense at all."

And while heroin and cocaine addicts often have habits that cost them
several hundred dollars a day, marijuana is a "cheap high", Boyd said, with
even a regular user unlikely to spend more than $5 to $10 a day.

"The price of a marijuana high is cheaper than an alcohol high," he said.

Sergeant Chuck Doucette of the RCMP's drug-awareness section said some
juvenile criminals without jobs do indeed commit property crimes in order
to buy pot. But he conceded that, aside from young offenders, it is rare
to find someone committing property crimes to feed their marijuana or
ecstasy habit.

Police have struggled over the years to find the best way of putting a
dollar value on large drug busts. The RCMP used to trumpet their busts by
announcing the street-level value of the drugs seized. But they stopped
after concerns were raised that it made the drug business look more
lucrative and attractive.

Police have also illustrated drug busts by talking about the "unit doses"
of drugs the bust represents or - in the case of heroin or cocaine - the
estimated number of overdose deaths the seizure would prevent. "What we're
trying to do is help people understand where the impact lies," Learned said.

Linking drug use to property crime is only the most recent method.

But even with heroin and cocaine seizures, Boyd said, it is not clear what
impact drug busts have on drug-linked property crime. That is because the
way in which seizures affect drug markets is still poorly understood. Under
the rules of supply and demand, drug shortages caused after a big seizure
will increase the cost of narcotics. And "if you have an increased price
for the drugs in question - that means the desperate addict has to commit
more crimes to finance his consumption," Boyd said.

Saturday's seizure was the first phase in a two-year investigation dubbed
Project E-Peptic that involves more than 40 officers from B.C. in
cooperation with the RCMP in Montreal. The drugs were seized during the
simultaneous execution of 10 search warrants across the Lower Mainland. In
addition to the drugs, police also found pharmaceutical production
equipment, a Glock pistol, $7,000 in cash and blank foreign passport books
for the former Soviet Union.

George Lawrence Neill, 53, of Vancouver , has been remanded in custody on
charges of possession of drugs for the purposes of trafficking and
possession of a restricted firearm.