SUPER POT: B.C.'S BONANZA

Meet Steve. He Ships High-Test Homegrown South Of The Border, Part Of An
Industry Now Worth Billions Of Dollars A Year. What's He Want? No Trouble
With Angels

Chilliwack, B.C. -- By a lonely, snow-swept highway just outside town, where
the Coast Mountains blend into Washington's Skagit Range, a well-trodden
path through thick brush leads south into the United States.

A sketch of a marijuana leaf has been mockingly scrawled on a wooden post
that marks the border. It's an apt symbol. This is just one among scores of
drug-smuggling routes that riddle British Columbia's porous,
800-kilometre-long border with the U.S. Northwest.

The province is now home to a huge -- and extremely profitable -- marijuana
export trade that appears to be leaving law enforcement in the dust. "This
is not a bunch of old hippies," says the head of B.C.'s new Organized Crime
Agency.

In a few short years, the marriage of hydroponic technology and organized
crime has given rise to a multibillion-dollar enterprise. To the
consternation of the United States, thousands of "grow operations" now send
south an annual crop that the normally skeptical Economist magazine recently
pegged at several hundred tonnes.

Aided by high-powered lights, fans, watering systems, nutrients and a wealth
of other accoutrements, plants can resemble large Christmas trees and yield
several pounds of potent pot each, which triples or quadruples in value by
the time it reaches New York or Los Angeles. There, a pound of B.C. pot
fetches around $6,000 (U.S.).

In the Woodstock era, marijuana commonly had a count of 2 or 3 per cent of
the ingredient that gets you high - tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Today, the
B.C. variety routinely runs 15 to 20 per cent - and a mind-addling 27 per
cent in one recent seizure.

Police say that through their wiretaps they have found that B.C. "bud" is
now so powerful that it is being exchanged, pound for pound, for cocaine.
Annual marijuana revenues approach those of forestry (worth $14.4-billion in
1998) and probably surpass tourism's (about $8.5-billion).

Not surprisingly, hydroponic supply stores have mushroomed across the Lower
Mainland. In 1990, there were three; the current Yellow Pages list 29. Even
Home Depot now sells whatever a grower needs. One retailer estimated his
hydroponic sales at $6-million a year, and he was under no illusion about
its chief purpose. "How many cherry tomatoes do you want to grow?" he
laughed.

Growers often outfit several sites, including warehouses. One man rarely
went near his operation. Everything was controlled from afar by a laptop
computer.

"It's out of control," said RCMP Inspector Kim Clark, who heads the
province's proceeds-of-crime unit. Last year, his office seized about
$12-million worth of cash and property linked to the hydroponic marijuana
trade. He calls it "just a drop in the bucket."

By all estimates, the Hells Angels now dominate the grow business, although
a member of the U.S. Border Patrol said about 70 per cent of the smugglers
caught last year were of Vietnamese descent.

But there are still a lot of people such as Steve, a wily independent grower
who is cautious about the company he keeps and has managed thus far to evade
detection -- and the rising tide of violence that police estimate accounts
for up to 20 homicides a year.

Steve is a clean-cut, middle-aged entrepreneur who brokers the sale of
hundreds of thousands of tax-free dollars worth of top-grade pot to the
United States each year, all grown on Vancouver's affluent west side.

He delivers a product whose THC content dwarfs that of Mexico, Jamaica and
almost everywhere else, and he has plenty of survival rules.

But there is one, he says, that is ironclad: Stay on the city's west side.
Never set up shop east of Main Street.

"You don't get on the Hells Angels' turf; it's theirs and they have it," he
explained over a drink in a Kitsilano restaurant, where he outlined what he
termed "a mom-and-pop operation" that has paid for his child's private
schooling and a modest art collection.

Steve takes pride in the fact that he doesn't carry a gun, but many growers
do. Along with the killings, police say, is a rising number of drug
rip-offs, robberies, shootings and assaults that, for obvious reasons, go
almost entirely unreported.

Then there is the plus side: A low risk of detection, lenient court
sentences, the absence of money-laundering legislation, weak-kneed
organized-crime laws, an RCMP that is understaffed, and a vast U.S. appetite
for a product that is, by every estimate, the best in the world.

Add to that U.S. penalties for drug cultivation that have become so severe
(in Texas, a sizable grow operation can draw life imprisonment) that many
U.S. pot farmers have now moved to Canada, according to the U.S. Border
Patrol.

Tolerant B.C. has long been home to a thriving pot culture. Drug offences
are double the national average, and a poll last year found that 63 per cent
of the population favoured decriminalizing simple marijuana possession.

Effectively, that has already happened. Under provisions of the Controlled
Drugs and Substances Act, suspects arrested with less than 30 grams of
cannabis no longer have to be fingerprinted, and busts in B.C. for such
quantities have all but ceased.

But the export trade, accounting for upward of three-quarters of the pot
grown in B.C., has reached such staggering proportions that last May, Canada
narrowly escaped being placed on the U.S. government's black list of
drug-source countries, alongside, for example, Colombia, and Afghanistan.

"The border has become an irresistible temptation to international
terrorists and smugglers," U.S. Representative Lamar Smith complained this
month, posing "a direct and growing threat to citizens in both Canada and
the United States."

Indeed, the U.S. administration announced plans this week to beef up
security along its northern border with the deployment of almost 600 new
agents. The catalyst was the recent arrests of inbound Algerian terrorist
suspects, along with a number of illegal immigrants, but the marijuana issue
looms almost as large.

"I don't think anyone has any idea what the extent of the problem is. It's
huge," said Dave Keller, intelligence head for the region's U.S. Border
Patrol.

Just how big is the marijuana-export business? A takedown in Langley, B.C.,
this week uncovered an operation comprising 3,400 plants, along with about
100 pounds of compressed, ready-for-export pot, but most are smaller.

Insp. Clark Offers Some Math.

In the first nine months of last year, roughly 4,500 people across Canada
were charged with cultivating marijuana, and of those, about 2,500 were
residents of B.C.

The average B.C. bust involved about 500 plants, with a fast-ballooning
average net value (south of the border) of about $1,000 per plant. But most
farmers harvest three crops a year, which if undetected would translate into
a potential of about $1.5-million per operation per year.

Allowing for the fact that more than one person was charged in some of the
busts, that still pushes the value to more than $3-billion.

And those are just the operations taken down in nine months.

As for the unseen total value, "I'm comfortable with a figure of about
$10-billion a year in B.C.," Insp. Clark said.

The U.S. Border Patrol in the region has seized about 500 pounds of
U.S.-bound pot in the past three months. "As far revenue-producing goes,
marijuana is way, way beyond the rest of the drugs [flowing south]," Mr.
Keller said.

On the Canadian side, enforcement falls to the Integrated Border Team,
comprising the RCMP, Canada Customs and the U.S. Border Patrol, armed with
infrared cameras, movement sensors and -- most critical -- intelligence
tips. In the past 10 months, about $12-million worth of drugs and money has
been seized, a small fraction of the total.

At Best, It's A Rear-Guard Action.

"Asian crime and the Hells Angels are the two areas of concern," said the
integrated team's RCMP Inspector Dick Grattan. "But here, this is not
targeting the CEOs. This is just watching the back door."

Steve's operation, modest as it is, illustrates how profitable the business
can be. He operates a meticulously controlled hydroponic operation in the
basement of a rented house, producing around eight crops a year of 16 to 18
pounds each time.

Harvested by a band of well-paid, close-mouthed clippers, Steve's pot sells
for about $2,400 a pound. He also takes in $400 a pound from three other
west-side grow operations whose sales he negotiates.

Steve could hardly be more watchful. Rent to his offshore landlord and
household bills are paid on time or early. There is a car in the driveway,
even though nobody lives in the house. At Christmastime, the lights go up.
At Halloween, candy is handed out from the door. The lawn is trimmed, the
bird feeder full.

Above all, and in contrast with some other drug dealers, Steve won't have
anything to do with cocaine because of the people the violence-saturated
coke business attracts. A cocaine merchant once stopped by his grow house.
Steve vacated the premises the next day.

To insulate himself, he sells his product to a middleman. "I need a buffer
between me and the Americans."

Compressed into bricks, the marijuana is then driven, shipped, flown or
carried -- by far the most common mode of transportation - across the
heavily forested border, often in hockey bags, where a network of
distributors waits.

It cost Steve about $40,000 to set up his state-of-the-art grow house, which
included $4,000 paid to an electrician to carry out an essential bypass
operation, which diverts and conceals the substantial quantities of
electricity sucked up to produce normal-looking bills.

His chief concern is that cannabis will soon be legalized, depriving him and
his associates of their livelihood. "I'm feeding four families and I don't
feel bad about anything I do."

Through Steve's lens, the booming hydroponic industry looks pretty benign.
But it has a darker side.

RCMP intelligence suggests that provincewide, it accounts for about 20
homicides each year.

"We have on average between six and 10 homicides that we know are directly
related to the grow operations," said RCMP Chief Superintendent Gary Bass,
who heads the force's major crime section for B.C.

"But those are just the ones where the body is basically found at a grow op.
There's probably quite a few more. . . ."

There is no data bank to cross-reference violence and the pot trade. Drugs
are dealt with by federal prosecutors. Provincial Crown attorneys handle
most other offences. But police who specialize in busting grow operations
say violence, commonly in the form of home invasions, has become routine.

"It's very territorial, no different than any other type of drug
trafficking, whether it's heroin or cocaine," Chief Supt. Bass said. "We see
the same players for the most part . . . and it's the same rules, the same
violence."

Some Killings Can Only Be Described As Stupid.

Witness the October, 1998, slaying of house caretaker Paul Smith in the
Willoughby district of Langley. As with many of B.C.'s marijuana farmers,
Mr. Smith, 38, was a Maritimer, brought west by his lifelong friend Robert
MacDonald. Along with another buddy, Richard Roach, Mr. Smith's job was to
look after Mr. MacDonald's grow operation of 322 plants.

When yet another drunken argument erupted between the two house sitters, Mr.
MacDonald showed up with a .32-calibre handgun and shot Mr. Smith in the
face, sending a torrent of blood gushing through the floorboards to the grow
room, one storey down. (He was sentenced to four years for manslaughter,
pleading self-defence.)

"MacDonald got mad because this [arguing] had been going on, enough's
enough, and it was drawing attention to the house," said RCMP Staff Sergeant
Rick Lawrence, who heads the Langley plainclothes section.

Or take the killing last May of Michael Blommaert, 44, in Surrey. This, too,
involved an argument at a grow operation. Mr. Blommaert was slain with the
12-gauge shotgun used to guard the budding crop of about 260 plants.

In both cases, the grow operations were believed to be independents, but
most are not, said Allan Castle, a money-laundering expert who lectures on
organized crime at the University of British Columbia.

"There are very few growers in the province who are not controlled by an
organized group, with about 70 per cent of it controlled by Hells Angels,"
he said. "Among the rest, the Vietnamese are the biggest players, and the
two groups have been killing each other at quite a rate in the last few
years.

"That stopped about a year ago and my sense is that some turf agreement has
ultimately been reached."

If there is an accord in place, that probably gives the groups an edge over
the province's organized-crime specialists, largely in limbo for the past
year. Until October, 1998, organized crime was the bailiwick of the
trouble-plagued Coordinated Law Enforcement Unit. Then, B.C.
Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh scrapped the joint-force unit and set up the
Organized Crime Agency, which only became operational this year.

The regular RCMP, meanwhile, is also struggling. Its current strength,
provincewide, is about 5,300 -- 800 fewer than what it says it needs.

Heading the new, 100-officer crime agency is Chief Officer Bev Busson, who
says the marijuana-export trade shows signs of spreading across Canada.
Certainly there have been plenty of hydroponic busts in Ontario and Quebec.

"It is massive," she said. ". . . It's big-crime business and people end up
dying over the amounts of money being made."

But the Hells Angels' connection to the drugs industry is hard to prove.

"Their organizational structure makes them very difficult to infiltrate or
work on," Chief Officer Busson said. "They're very careful."

After a top-secret investigation in Vancouver last year, two B.C. Hells
Angels were charged with importing cocaine, while in nearby Surrey, another
member was busted at a marijuana grow operation.

But such charges are rare. Among their 90 or so "made" members in B.C., plus
perhaps twice that number of associates scattered across seven chapters,
most Angels have no criminal records, and many do not even look like bikers.
Many favour expensive suits, stock options and large houses in quiet Lower
Mainland communities.

The police say B.C.'s Angels are the wealthiest in the organization and
supervise a dedicated contingent of expert horticulturists who oversee a
vast network of grow operations, few of which are operated directly by
members.

Efforts to reach the Angels and their lawyers were unsuccessful.

"I'd suggest you take a walk," said a bearded, unfriendly figure unlocking
the chain-link fence surrounding the clubhouse of the group's White Rock
chapter, which moved to Langley several years ago.

When the bikers moved in, purchasing two hectares through a numbered company
for about $300,000, local property values plummeted by at least 25 per cent,
a neighbour said.

But for the most part, he added, the Angels' behaviour has been above
reproach. Last year, hundreds of bikers from across North America showed up
for a funeral, "and that was a real eye-opener." But day to day, there are
no rowdy parties, no pit bulls snarling at the gates, no litter, no pot
smoking on the steps of the white frame house.

"They go out of their way not to attract attention," the neighbour said.
"These are business people, and they've been allowed to operate all these
years without interference."