DRUGS AND ORGANIZED CRIME LINKED '100 PER CENT'

The same day that news of two house fires - one beginning with an
explosion - at marijuana grow operations in Alberta surfaced, RCMP
Staff Sgt. Ian Sanderson was in Grande Prairie, talking about the
far-reaching effects of the drug trade and organized crime.

"It's absolute," Sanderson said of the connection between drugs and
organized crime. "There's no doubt that 100 per cent of drug activity
is run by organized criminal activity.

"In many, many different ways. It's not just the drug that sells, it's
the other type of activities that are used to fund drug activity or
make additional profit relating to the drug activity."

The activities that are used to fund the drug trade - the buying and
selling of contraband tobacco, contraband firearms and even diamonds -
was just one of the many topics Sanderson touched on during his
two-hour presentation on drugs and organized crime on Tuesday morning
at the Golden Age Centre.

Other topics Sanderson explored were aimed at busting a few myths:
Like the one about marijuana being relatively harmless - especially
when compared to tobacco or hard drugs.

Sanderson, an RCMP officer now working at K-Division headquarters in
Edmonton, attacked the perception marijuana is not that bad because
it's natural and often grown as an organic product.

"So is a 1,200-pound grizzly bear," he said to the crowd of about two
dozen people. "But are you going to play with it?"

He then presented the audience with some facts: 80 per cent of
Canadian marijuana is exported, and most of it does not come back as
cash.

"The vast majority of marijuana produced in British Columbia goes
south of the border and comes back as cocaine or firearms," he said,
adding that, fittingly enough, much of the marijuana makes it across
the border in hockey bags.

He then spent much of the second half of the presentation talking
about grow operations, a great majority of which, he said, are run by
groups involved in organized crime.

He explained the dangers houses which have been converted to grow
operations pose to emergency crews as well as to the future owners of
the property.

To bypass the electricity meter on houses, culprits often hack through
the foundation of the house to get to the power source, leaving the
house with a structurally compromised foundation and and a faulty
electrical system.

In one recent case in Surrey, B.C., firefighters were shocked by
high-voltage electricity when they went to put out a blaze at a grow
operation: The faulty wiring had grounded out, affecting an area
around the home about 20 metres in diameter.

He said in Surrey, about nine per cent of house fires are directly
related to grow operations.

Other modifications to houses include cutting holes in the ceiling to
allow for more ventilation, another condition that hinders
firefighters in dousing the flames. Since the plants thrive on carbon
monoxide and carbon dioxide, furnace exhausts are commonly rerouted so
they expel their exhaust gases into the basement where the grow
operation is.

Often, he said, growers recruit young families to live in the house to
give it a less suspicious appearance.

"We go in there and find one bedroom and a kitchen ... and the rest of
the house is a grow operation," Sanderson said, pointing out in one
drug house, the children had toxic levels of carbon monoxide in their
blood.

Because of the high humidity in grow operations, many houses are left
with large amounts of mould which are often simply painted over,
exposing future owners to the harmful effects of black mould.

Near the end of the presentation, Sanderson said that - in part
because of stricter borders in recent years, which are catching more
and more incoming drugs - home labs for making methamphetamine and
ecstasy have been sprouting up all over the country.

"Each lab is a mini toxic-waste site," said the narrator in a video
Sanderson showed, adding these labs are capable of killing a long time
after they are dismantled, often affecting small children who come
into contact with residue embedded in the carpet.

The video went on to show a handful of homes where labs exploded and
caused the home to burn to the ground ... sometimes killing innocent
victims inside.

Finally, Sanderson showed pictures of a large-scale synthetic drug lab
in rural Alberta, where as much as 40 kilograms of the drug were
produced in a single reaction. He held up a tiny packet holding one
gram - or about 10 hits - to give people an idea of the scale of the
operation.

The operators of that lab, Sanderson added, often drove out to the
countryside and dumped the waste chemicals onto fields and even a
wildlife reserve, killing many animals.

Sanderson's Tuesday morning presentation was one of five talks he was
giving in the Swan City on topics ranging from drugs and the workplace
to performance enhancing drugs.

After a morning speech at Grande Prairie Composite high school, his
final presentation will be held tonight 7-9 p.m. at the Beaverlodge
Community Centre.