PRICEY MARIJUANA POURING IN

TORONTO -- In the past, Canada's high-profile exports to the United States
tended to be hockey players, singers, and comedians. Now there's a cash
crop on the list -- homegrown marijuana that's among the priciest and
potent in the world.

The pot is so coveted on the West Coast that it sometimes trades
pound-for-pound for cocaine, officials say. Stepped-up searches for it have
led to vexing backups at some border crossings.

Although the U.S. border with Mexico remains the No. 1 smuggling zone,
customs agents are devoting increasing attention to the northern border,
particularly in Washington State. In the past year, the Customs Service has
nearly doubled its enforcement effort there because of a surge of marijuana
smuggled in from British Columbia.

"The price of B.C. marijuana has become very high," said Gene Kervan,
customs director at the busy border crossing at Blaine, Wash. "It's the
drug of choice in many locations."

Much of the prized pot is grown indoors by the increasingly popular
hydroponic method -- using bright artificial light and nutrient-laced
water, but no soil. Kervan said the product can earn as much as $6,000 a
pound in parts of California -- 10 times the typical price for marijuana
from Mexico.

Kervan's officers have been searching more and more vehicles coming south
from the Vancouver area, and uncovering more and more pot -- a change that
has sometimes resulted in two-hour backups for motorists trying to enter
the United States.

The border crackdown in Washington has pushed some traffickers east to
Idaho. Customs officers there conducted a two-week operation in March and
made eight drug arrests -- about the number usually made in a year.

Farther east, police say hydroponic marijuana growing is on the upswing in
Ontario, some of it apparently destined for export to upstate New York.

"You don't hear of boatloads or airplane shipments of weed coming into the
country," said Bryan Baxter, a drug-squad detective in Hamilton, Ontario.
"Pot is being exported from Canada -- particularly B.C. and Ontario --
instead of being imported."

Marijuana is believed to rank now as British Columbia's most lucrative
agricultural product -- with illegal revenues estimated anywhere from $400
million to more than $3 billion.

Some of the growing operations are elaborate. Officers on Vancouver Island
last week seized 2,400 marijuana plants from an indoor pot farm and
arrested a couple who were covertly diverting electricity to power 62
1,000-watt lights.

Several thousand British Columbians are believed to be growing marijuana
commercially. Smugglers range from amateurs to professionals, well-equipped
couriers recruited by Asian-linked crime gangs in Vancouver.

Kervan said there is no typical pot smuggler.

"That's the toughest part for us," he said, recounting a border bust
involving a husband and wife carrying 17 pounds of marijuana along with
their two young children. That same day, a couple in their 70s was arrested
for carrying 24 pounds of marijuana in their truck.

"They looked like a normal grandma and grandpa coming down to go shopping,"
he said.

Mike Lovejoy, director of anti-smuggling efforts at the Customs Service
headquarters in Washington, D.C., said border drug seizures in Washington
State more than tripled from 1996 to 1997 -- and the amount seized this
year already has surpassed the 1997 total of 1,486 pounds.

But Kervan says his officers are lucky if they are intercepting even 10
percent of the marijuana coming in.

"We have to learn how to do this smarter than we're doing it now. We can't
back the traffic up to Alaska," he said. "We get 5 million cars a year at
Blaine. Even if 99 percent of those people are OK, that's still 50,000 bad
guys coming through."

Although experts are trying to find ways to make border searches quicker
and more effective, the backups at Blaine are likely to get worse during
the peak summer season.

"It has the potential for being really ugly," said Val Meredith, a member
of Parliament who represents suburban Vancouver.