THE DOPE ON THE WEST COAST'S POT CULTURE

Drug is found everywhere, from cafe‚s to the Internet

In a spacious, seaside home on the Sunshine Coast, a group of marijuana
growers and smokers have gathered to sample and judge B.C.'s best. It's
a biannual ritual hosted by Mr. Pot Millionaire, Marc Emery, who has
long been the bane of the law on the west coast for his outspoken
promotion of legalization.

Mr. Emery, 42, was the former owner of the Cannabis Cafe‚ in Vancouver
until it was shut down by the city in 1998. After enduring lengthy
legal battles with city officials and police, he sold his business and
moved away from the city.

Now, ensconced in this pleasure palace about 20 kilometres north of
Vancouver in the tiny town of Gibsons, he has moved his marijuana
empire online. His Web site, www.emeryseeds.com, which boasts 350
varieties of seeds from Blue Moonshine to Mindbender to Texada
Timewarp, is the indisputable international king of seed-selling Web
sites.

Full of marijuana grow tips, equipment sales and chat forums, the site
is also, in part, built-in promotion for his magazine, Cannabis
Culture. The magazine, in turn, provides fuel for Mr. Emery's latest
venture, Pot TV and Radio, an online network operating out of his
basement and dedicated to the cause -- legalization.

Mr. Emery expects to earn about $2.5-million this year from his
marijuana-related businesses. The taste test, at which he hands out 10
zip-locks full of "premium B.C. bud" to each guest, is good business.

"This," says Mr. Emery, passing around a colourful glass bong, "is top
of the market."

One of his guests is Michael Poole, a self-proclaimed aging hippie and
author of Romancing Mary Jane, a much-touted 1998 book about his failed
attempts to turn from successful filmmaker to marijuana grower. Mr.
Poole and the rest of the guests will have their thoughts about each
strain of marijuana posted on Mr. Emery's Web site and in the magazine.
Their commentary will then spur orders for seeds from around the world.

"It's a very nice light stone," Mr. Poole says, puffing on some Island
Sweet Skunk. "It's gentle on the throat."

The West Coast has long been known as an oasis where marijuana is
grown, smoked, sold and accepted, a place where you can earn up to $300
a day "trimming" and watering marijuana plants. In the last few years,
in the wake of the collapse of the fishery and the forestry industry,
it has become B.C.'s main cash crop. Lenient sentencing, a liberal
political atmosphere and de facto legalization are contributing to a
pot renaissance in B.C.

"This is Vansterdam," says David Malmo-Levine, a tenacious and fiery
29-year-old, lighting up a joint at one of the city's few remaining
hemp caf‚s. "You'll never believe what's under your nose."

There used to be a half-dozen cafe‚s near the city's tourist district,
Gastown, that sold pipes and rolling papers and allowed customers to
smoke freely. Marijuana use was so open it drove city officials crazy.
In return, they refused to give out business licences to these hemp
caf‚s. But even this could not eliminate them entirely. There are still
a few left, Mr. Emery says, even if they now stay out of the media
radar.

One of them, the Blunt Bros. caf‚ on West Hastings is a holdout from a
previous era in Vancouver's pot history. It has a sealed off room,
similar to the smoking rooms in airports, where people can smoke
marijuana before settling on couches to drink coffee and listen to
music.

But at 4:20 p.m., when the city's bylaw officers have gone home for the
day, it's "dignity time." People begin to smoke joints freely, outside
the sealed off room, and the rich, acrid smoke wafts out on to the
street.

Despite the decreasing number of hemp cafe‚s, marijuana is still as
pervasive as it used to be. It's just that instead of cafe‚s all over
the city, there are now smokeasies.

The city's biggest and most notorious smokeasy is right beside Blunt
Bros. Pressing a buzzer to be let in, Malmo-Levine provides a secret
code and stares up at the security camera before walking up the steep
stairs. Inside, the place is decorated with psychedelic art on the
walls, pool tables and people sitting on threadbare couches smoking
hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes and pipes.

Across the street in an inconspicuous office building, Malmo-Levine
knocks on the door of a film production company. Inside, it's a
so-called "shopeasy." Amidst the cameras and editing equipment, David
Smith (not his real name), a filmmaker, sells marijuana to a few select
customers, in part to finance his documentaries.

He brings out a big bag of the stuff. "It's an outdoor, organic
strain," he says. "It's milder and doesn't mess you up as much as
indoor pot does." Some of the growers in the city, says Mr. Smith, grow
marijuana like beef -- with chemicals and fertilizers to make it grow
as fast as possible. "That's usually the stuff associated with the
bikers. The people I'm associated with don't use chemicals."

About four years ago, Mr. Smith says, the police tried to arrest him at
a bus station where he was meeting a woman for a sale. But he noticed
undercover police following him, glancing up from behind newspapers in
the waiting area, and he knew something was wrong. He refused the sale
and avoided arrest. Since then, he says, they haven't bothered him.

If the public is unaware of these smokeasies, the police know exactly
what's going on but are relatively powerless to stop it. "It's a matter
of policing priorities," says Staff Sergeant Chuck Doucette of the
Vancouver RCMP. Their priorities are high-level trafficking,
importation and organized crime.

As for someone like Mr. Emery and his Internet seed-selling operation,
Staff Sgt. Doucette says, "He's between the cracks because no one will
prosecute for seeds anymore. So he's untouchable." Compared to the
heroin dealers, says Staff Sgt. Doucette, Emery just isn't a priority,
"a pain in the ass" but not at the top of their list.

Staff Sgt. Doucette says the most significant change to the marijuana
industry in B.C. was the entry of organized crime about four years ago.
Now, violence is prevalent in the world of West Coast marijuana
cultivation; and with increasing police crackdowns on what are known as
"grow ops," (houses where dealers set up hundreds of plants) that
violence, says Staff Sgt. Doucette, is likely to move east.

The Hells Angels and Vietnamese gangs who are routinely busted in grow
houses -- where weapons and children and dead bodies have been found --
are now moving their operations toward Alberta and Saskatchewan, where
law enforcement is less experienced with the hi-tech marijuana
"industry."

The marijuana smokers at Mr. Emery's house would no doubt raise the
victory flags at the exodus of organized crime to all points eastward
-- if they could get off the couch.

Most small-scale growers, such as those at Mr. Emery's home, say they
are in the business for themselves and their friends, making a small,
but tidy annual profit of anywhere between $20,000 to $100,000. (An
increasing number of them also grow for the Compassion Club, a
distribution clinic in Vancouver for medical marijuana). In rural B.C.,
growing marijuana is still largely the domain of hippies and the
peace-loving, back-to-nature crowd.

"More is being grown because of organized crime," says Staff Sgt.
Doucette, "but the amount being smoked hasn't changed."

If the amount of marijuana being smoked in B.C. hasn't changed, a lot
of other factors have. For one, the THC content (otherwise known as
tetrahydrocannabinol, or the substance that creates the sensation of
feeling "high") has increased considerably, making B.C. strains some of
the most potent in the world. What the Baby Boomers were smoking 40
years ago is nothing compared to the marijuana sold to kids today, says
Staff Sgt. Doucette. The THC content has increased from 2% to 18%.

"Kids are being hit way harder than their parents were," he says. "But
they still think what they smoked is what's out there."

The high potency is a residual effect of the arrival of hydroponic
industry in the 1980s, when growers began experimenting with breeding
and fertilizers. By the early 1990s, marijuana had become a cottage
industry, supplying Vancouver's 29 hydroponic equipment outlets with a
booming business. Now, a pound of B.C. bud can fetch about US$3,000 on
the streets of Seattle, Los Angeles and New York.

Opinions vary as to just how big a business marijuana has become in
B.C. Police say the crop is worth anywhere from $1- to $2-billion
annually -- roughly the value of the province's mining industry and
about twice that of the fishing industry.

Still, outside of organized crime, authorities say, it's not a big
enough business to warrant significant punishment. Canadian courts have
so far been reluctant to give serious jail time to low-level growers
and couriers. A recent study by the Vancouver Sun showed that only one
in five people convicted of marijuana-related crimes received jail
time, and of those who did, nearly all could have been out within 45
days. Most of the rest received fines averaging roughly $2,000, the
annual revenue from one plant.

Staff Sgt. Doucette says that's part of the reason why gangs are coming
to B.C. from other parts of the country to set up shop. "Because of the
liberal attitudes here," he says, "if they're caught they know nothing
will happen to them."

But he admits the recent crackdown on organized crime have had some
success. "Other parts of Canada will experience this," he says.

"It's already happening. Grow operations are moving to Alberta and
Saskatchewan." (Little wonder why, according to Staff Sgt. Doucette. In
Vancouver, a small house rents for $1,000 a month. On parts of the
Prairies, he says, $5,000 will buy a farm.)

But for Mr. Emery, business doesn't look as if it will ever slow down.
"Pot is simply everywhere," he says. "It's a commodity like Okanagan
fruit. It's grown here. It's popular. It's fresh and inexpensive at
harvest time.

"It doesn't have any down side," Emery adds of B.C.'s blossoming
marijuana trade. "You always know someone who has some kind of
connection in the industry, and it's the cheapest place in North
America to buy it."