STUDENTS TIP OFF COPS TO DRUGS

Ecstacy Shaped Like Cartoon Characters Sold Near Yarmouth County
School, Police Say

YARMOUTH - More than 300 tiny pills resembling cartoon characters
were seized in a Yarmouth County drug bust earlier this month.

More than 50 grams of cocaine was also taken by RCMP during a raid
conducted just over a kilometre from Drumlin Heights Consolidated School.

On Wednesday police arrested Wendy Lynn Porter, 38, and charged her
with trafficking in ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana. She was arrested
at a Glenwood home where she lives as a tenant, said Cpl. Duane Lopie
of the RCMP's Yarmouth-Clare street crime enforcement unit.

She's also charged with growing marijuana.

Some of the tiny pills, believed by police to be ecstasy, were
moulded in green to resemble the masked faces of Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles. Others were in white and shaped like the heads of a Transformer robot.

The pills vaguely resembled multivitamins given to children.

Mounties acted quickly after some students at the school told Const.
Mario Ross, the RCMP's school safety resource officer for Yarmouth
County, about the drugs, Const. Ross said Wednesday.

"Any type of drug activity near a school is a priority," Cpl. Lopie said.

When officers arrived at the home with a search warrant last week
they found marijuana growing on the premises as well as drugs ready
for sale. They also seized a large quantity of cash, some scales and
other items, Cpl Lopie said.

Ms. Porter was released from custody soon after her arrest with
instructions to appear in Yarmouth provincial court in August.

Drumlin Heights Consolidated School has about 434 students in Grades
Primary through 12, says the Tri-County regional school board website.

The school's principal, Dwayne Landry, chose not to discuss the drug
problem Wednesday, referring questions to school board administration.

An RCMP drug expert said Wednesday that ecstasy is now the most
popular drug among high school students in Nova Scotia.

"There's not a high school in Nova Scotia or Atlantic Canada, for
that matter, that you can't buy ecstasy at," Cpl. Gord Vail, of the
RCMP's synthetic drug unit, said.

About 10 years ago, he said, ecstasy came in plain, white tablets
that sold for $25 to $40, but today they sell for about $10 each and
come in bright colours with stamped images of cartoon characters, NFL
logos and other things to entice their target market of 15- to 30-year-olds.

Cpl. Vail compares the style change to breakfast cereals. Young kids
always go for the brightly coloured products with funny shapes or
pictures of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Power Rangers.

"This stuff is predominantly trafficked to young people, particularly
in our schools, and I just don't think that's going to change," he said.

Although the pills are all sold as ecstasy, many times they contain
other substances.

In 2007, Cpl. Vail sent 223 tablets, taken in a number of seizures
across Atlantic Canada, to a lab for testing. Only a quarter of them
were made of pure ecstasy, which goes by the chemical name
methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA.

More than half the tablets had no ecstasy, but had the more addictive
methamphetamine as the main active ingredient.

"The vast majority of traffickers in the Atlantic region do not know
what they are selling, so obviously our kids don't know what they're
getting," Cpl. Vail said.

The producers use methamphetamine because it's cheaper, he said.

Cpl. Vail said all of Canada's ecstasy is made by organized crime
groups in Quebec, Ontario or British Columbia and those provinces
produce 80 per cent of the ecstasy used in the United States.

It costs about 25 cents to make one pill, he said.

The organized crime groups are mostly Asian, he said, adding that one
of the drug's vital ingredients (piperonyl methyl ketone, or PMK) can
be bought in China or India, but few other places.