SMUGGLING BY AIR LEADS TO SPATE OF POT SEIZURES

RCMP at Vancouver International Airport have arrested more than 20
travellers in the past eight months for attempting to smuggle
suitcases filled with marijuana on planes bound for Toronto and other
eastern cities.

In some of the arrests, police have seized up to 20 kilograms of
marijuana, which has a street value in eastern Canada of up to $3,000
a kilogram.

Smuggling marijuana by air is a new trend that began last summer and
is continuing this year at a pace that has forced police and customs
officers to take specialized training to help profile the smugglers
and to routinely use drug-sniffing police dogs to locate the drugs.

``The drug trade is always evolving,'' said RCMP Corporal Jim Allan,
head of the airport's smuggling investigation unit.

``People will do all kinds of things to transport drugs.''

So far, investigators haven't determined exactly why smugglers are
using planes as vehicles of transportation or why the eastern cities,
mainly Toronto, are the destinations for the drug.

Allan, however, believes the price of marijuana has something to do
with it.

The quality of B.C. marijuana is so good that it can be sold for about
$1,700 a kilogram on the streets of Vancouver and up to $3,000 a
kilogram in Toronto and Montreal.

``Look at how many grow-ops we've got in Vancouver,'' he said. ``Not
everybody in Vancouver is smoking it, so it's got to go
somewhere.''

In some of the cases, Allan said, police have discovered that
marijuana being sent to the east is part of deal that involves cheap
cigarettes from Ontario and Quebec being shipped back to Vancouver.

Suspects caught at the Vancouver airport have ranged in age from
18-year-old twin sisters from Montreal to 60-year-old men from
Toronto, mostly of Vietnamese origin. All are Canadian citizens or
landed immigrants who have been in the country for some time, and some
have previous drug and theft-related convictions.

Some are from Vancouver but most are from Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa
and have ``fluctuating addresses'' across the country, said Crown
prosecutor Gerry Sair, who along with Janna Hyman is responsible for
prosecuting the cases in Richmond provincial court.

In a court case last month, the first one since the airport smuggling
trend began, Judge Ron Fratkin sentenced Van Duc Nguyen, 38, of
Ottawa, to a six-month conditional sentence and 50 hours of community
work. Nguyen had pleaded guilty earlier to possession of marijuana for
the purpose of trafficking.

Police arrested Nguyen on April 4 as he was about to take off to
Ottawa on a Canada 3000 flight. A police dog in the airport's baggage
area sniffed out three kilograms of dried marijuana and one kilogram
of fresh marijuana cuttings in a suitcase belonging to Nguyen.

In imposing the sentence, Fratkin said he wouldn't be sending Nguyen
to jail because he pleaded guilty and had no criminal record.

``Others who don't present themselves as Mr. Nguyen, could find
themselves in jail,'' Fratkin said.