U.S., BRITISH COLUMBIA ATTEMPT TO DRAW THE LINE ON MARIJUANA

LYNDEN, Whatcom County - They toss it across the border inside
footballs.

They paddle it down in kayaks.

They float it down from British Columbia in hollowed logs equipped
with global-positioning satellite devices.

But the marijuana smuggler's favorite method is simply toting it over
on foot, in that most Canadian accoutrement, the hockey bag.

"They're just big, long, black bags full of dope," said Wes
Vanderheyden, head of the U.S. Border Patrol sector in the small town
of Lynden.

"It seems to be a standard for them," said Keith Miller, assistant
chief patrol agent for Western Washington. "They don't talk about it
in terms of pounds; it's how many hockey bags' worth." (A single
hockey-bag load runs from 60 to 100 pounds.)

With its tolerant drug policing and pot-friendly businesses, Vancouver
has become known as the "Amsterdam of North America," and British
Columbia is home to a $4 billion industry that grows pot four times
more potent than the stuff from Mexico.

But while Vancouver still looks the other way on discreet, individual
pot-smoking, it clearly has had enough of the "Amsterdam" label.

Smuggling has boomed as Hell's Angels and other gangs have muscled in.
And outnumbered law-enforcement agencies on both sides of the border
have joined forces in an unprecedented crackdown.

In contrast to the hippie-generation marijuana of the '60s, "The
smuggling we're seeing is . . . clearly organized crime for profit,"
said Dave Keller, chief of intelligence for the U.S. Border Patrol in
Western Washington.

In the past six months, U.S. agents seized 1,300 pounds of marijuana
worth nearly $8 million at an estimated Los Angeles street value of
$6,000 per pound, Keller said.

That may sound like a lot of hockey bags, and the cross-border
cooperation has helped, but Keller said, "We're just getting a very
small amount of what's available."

Fewer than 50 agents patrol 130 miles of border countryside. Much of
the terrain is mountainous or in the watery maze of Puget Sound
islands and inlets.

In Vanderheyden's Lynden sector, about 95 miles north of Seattle, a
dozen agents have orders to nab every bag-toting traveler dodging
across a 63-mile stretch of dairy pasture, farms and forest.

A six-foot grassy ditch is the international divide between Boundary
Road in the United States and Zero Avenue in Canada. A favorite ploy
of smugglers, Vanderheyden said, is to wait with their hockey bag on
the Canadian side of the ditch until their contact drives up on the
U.S. side. The trunk pops open, the bag is tossed in and the smuggler
hops back into Canada.

Once back across the ditch, "they can stand there in the middle of the
road and do this," he said, sticking his thumbs in his ears and
waggling his fingers.

Smugglers can turn to an Internet site that lists the U.S. Border
Patrol offices and patrols, said Inspector Dick Grattan, officer in
charge of the Vancouver Customs and Excise section for Canadian Customs.

"If you're clever and you plan, you're going to get it over," said
Marc Emery, B.C.'s "Prince of Pot," who publishes a magazine about
cannabis and sells marijuana seeds over the Internet.

"You really have to be stupid to get caught," Emery said, sipping
herbal tea in the Blunt Bros cafe in Vancouver. Pot smoke wafted from
a glass-walled lounge where patrons stood chatting and openly puffing
joints.

But such scenes are becoming more scarce. Several coffeehouses and
cannabis-based businesses have lost their licenses or been raided by
police recently. Dozens of Vancouver's estimated 4,500 home-growing
operations have been raided in the past two months.

Emery was forced in 1998 to sell his Cannabis Cafe, where pot-smoking
was allowed at tables, after the city yanked his business license. By
his count, his assets have been seized four times, he has been jailed
eight times and he has pleaded guilty to 23 drug-related charges in
the last few years.

However, he has received little jail time. Emery speculates that a
U.S. court would have jailed him "for life, forever."