OUR POT IS RATED HOT - BIG EXPORT ITEM

A world-class reputation is a carefully cultivated thing, and so it is with
B.C. pot.

Within the span of a generation home-grown marijuana has gone from outlaw
weed to major export item by following -- with glaring exception of the
Criminal Code -- all the accepted rules of commerce.

Imported expertise, initially in the form of Vietnam-era draft dodgers,
research and development, security of supply, and international marketing
have all played their part.

Even the U.S. Border Patrol, run ragged by B.C. pot-smuggling traffic, pays
a grudging compliment.

"The potency of the Canadian marijuana is such they'll trade, pound for
pound, cocaine for Canadian marijuana," says Gene Davis, deputy chief
patrol agent for the Blaine region.

"There is nowhere that's got better quality marijuana than B.C."

Davis says this with the resigned air of a man who knows the record 160
kilograms his agents have seized this year represent the tip of the tip of
the iceberg.

Local police are also fighting an uphill battle -- against the scale of the
endless harvest, and the weight of public and judicial indifference.

Apart from outdoor cultivation -- hidden in forest, field and island
outpost -- police estimate indoor hydroponic operations in Greater
Vancouver alone number in the thousands.

Just Thursday, local police made four marijuana seizures. One, an elaborate
grow operation in a Burnaby fertilizer warehouse, netted 2,200 plants worth
more than $2 million.

Most grow operators without previous convictions face fines and equipment
seizure, something they treat as a business tax, says RCMP Sergeant Chuck
Doucette, provincial drug awareness coordinator.

Such busts do little to undo the marketing bonanza that B.C. pot has
enjoyed in both the international mainstream and the outlaw media in recent
years.

Consider the protective public attitude to Whistler snowboarder Ross
Rebagliati, whose gold medal redefined the Olympic ideals of "Faster,
Higher, Stronger."

His pot-positive urine sample, far from generating outrage, became an
endorsement of the power of B.C. pot. "Our boy shredded!" said the
Doonesbury colour comic in last weekend's papers. "He's way worthy, man!
Who cares if he hangs with stoners?"

Put aside for a moment the nagging question of its illegality [as do 12 per
cent of British Columbians who smoke pot, according to a Health Canada
estimate] and you have an economic success story akin to the reborn B.C.
wine industry.

Except, very probably, the numbers are larger.

Even marijuana seed catalogues are reminiscent of the Wine Spectator's
reverential descriptions of taste and lineage:

"Northern Lights [10 seeds, $300] has dominated the various Harvest
Festivals."

"Slyder" offers "a strong lethargic stone." "Western Winds" is "fantastic
for conversation or romance, with its relaxing and invigorating qualities."

The RCMP's Doucette won't publicly estimate the value of the pot crop,
saying it gets too much glorification as it is.

CNN, ABC TV, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are among the
latest media outlets to look at B.C.'s high-test pot and tolerant judiciary.

Most recently, the April 2 Rolling Stone magazine celebrated "Vansterdam's"
easy ways. "The drug is being cultivated, smoked and championed in
Vancouver more openly than anywhere else on the continent."

Will this "common-sense drug policy" spread, asked the magazine, "or is it
just a Prague Spring for pot activists?"

Lately, the betting is on Prague Spring.

Such articles have a way of getting up the authorities' nose.

Raids have a tendency to follow with renewed vigour.

Even Marc Emery, ex-Vancouver mayoral candidate and the city's most visible
potrepreneur, has been laid low by a successive series of police raids.

Several pending trafficking charges over the sale of marijuana seeds, a
mountain of legal bills, and Vancouver's withdrawal of his business licence
forced the sale of Hemp B.C. and Cannabis Cafe on West Hastings to some of
his 30-odd employees.

Still, the cafe remains open, as does the rival Amsterdam Hemporium around
the corner. Emery is still publishing the bi-monthly Cannabis Canada
magazine, and his Internet seed outlet is still operating, although down
from his pre-raid high of $20,000 a week in sales.

"I'm a bit despondent actually," says Emery, who nonetheless talks in
exclamation points. Not just police are barking at his heels. He is now
going -- head-to-head -- against four or five seed-order competitors.

Emery estimates B.C.'s crop has an annual value of $2 billion to $4
billion. He credits his ability to sell his message in the media for much
of this. His critics tend to agree.

"There is no more perfect economy than pot," Emery says on a recent
afternoon in the funky Gastown distribution centre for Hemp B.C.

"Here you start with bull-s- - -, water, a few seeds and some dirt. Three
months later, an American is giving you a big wad of money, taking your
stuff, going home -- and he burns it!"

With bull and seeds Emery grew what he calls a "revolution by retail" since
1994, although he claims to have never sold pot. His niche is serving those
who grow and those who smoke.

The notoriety of B.C. pot he credits to "a harmonic set of circumstances."

The strains carried north by draft dodgers combined with local expertise
has created hundreds of varieties. Hydroponic techniques are shared and
refined. The Hemp B.C. website runs continuous discussion groups on
everything from home-wiring to advanced techniques for cloning and growing.

Prohibition keeps the price artificially high -- $4,000-$6,000 retail in
the U.S. -- while lower penalties lessen the risk.

"You've created an environment where it is very profitable and very
fortuitous to grow here and export to the United States," he says.

The potency of today's product would shock boomers used to the buzz of the
bell-bottom era, says the RCMP's Doucette.

It is a business, he says. "They do marketing. They try to make their
product better than their competitor's product. That's why we have this
high-grade marijuana with a THC level now routinely in the high teens and
as high as 30 per cent, compared to the stuff out there 15 years ago that
was only one or two per cent."

The ratio of profit to risk has brought a new generation of entrepreneurs:
bike gangs and other organized criminals, and Americans who have moved
north to lesson their chances of pulling serious jail time, says Davis of
the U.S. Border Patrol.

The B.C.-Washington border is a cat-and-mouse exercise pitting a handful of
border patrol agents and RCMP officers against a corps of professional pot
couriers, amateur adrenaline junkies and quick-buck artists.

With trans-border delivery payments of up to $1,000 a pound, the incentive
is obvious, and the odds are stacked in the smuggler's favour.

About 300 border agents are deployed along the northern U.S. border,
compared to 7,000 fighting the human flood across its southern flank with
Mexico.

Just 25 U.S. agents patrol the stretch from Blaine to the mountains at
Sumas, although it is part of a U.S.-designated "high-intensity
drug-trafficking area." Smuggling techniques range from the elaborately
high-tech to the disarmingly obvious.

One group simply stuffed the pot into plastic trash bags and pitched it
south across the border, which is little more than a ditch between two
residential roads at some points. There it sat, like all the other garbage
bags along the street, until the smugglers drove through a border port and
picked it up.

More hardened pros are rigged with body armour, night vision goggles,
camouflage, scanners and often weapons. Their sprint along any number of
forest paths or suburban back gardens -- often picked up by border-patrol
sensors -- is timed to the second.

Before agents can scramble to the site, a vehicle rolling along the
American side has scooped up the cargo. Another shipment of B.C.'s finest
disappears down the I-5.