OPIUM-POPPY BUST SETS RECORD

RCMP Arrests Two After Seven-acre Field Yields 60,000 Plants

The RCMP made what it said was the largest opium-poppy plant bust in
Canadian history Monday when they discovered a seven-acre field
containing an estimated 60,000 plants in rural Chilliwack.

When police arrived they found two men--one a 31-year-old from
Abbotsford and the other a 24-year-old from Mission -- tending to the
field. The two men did not own the property, which had been leased
from an individual who is not involved, police say. The suspects were
arrested and have been released and scheduled to appear in court on
Dec. 14.

The men, who were unknown to police, will likely face charges of
production of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled
substance for the purpose of trafficking.

Mounties said the opium buds, which open up into bright pink and
purple flowers that contain a pod capsule full of poppy seeds, were in
various stages of growth. They appeared to have been growing there for
one to two months.

Police believe the poppies were being grown to produce doda, a drug
that is made by harvesting the pod and grinding it into a fine powder.

"The narcotic effects are similar to [those] of heroin," said Staff
Sgt. Dave Goddard, of the RCMP Federal Drug Enforcement Branch. "There
is a euphoria that is produced about 20 to 30 minutes after consuming
the doda in a tea or an herbal blend."

Side effects include nausea and dizziness, Goddard said. Taken in
large dosages, doda can lead to addiction and even cause death.

Heroin is also derived from the opium poppy. But unlike heroin, the
opiates in doda are less concentrated, said police spokesman Const.
Michael McLaughlin. He said the retail value of doda is hard to
determine. "We don't get a lot of this in Canada," he said. "This is
not a case where you have a brick of packaged, high-quality cocaine
where we know roughly how much it's going for in the open market."

Codeine and morphine, which require a doctor's prescription, are other
byproducts of the opium-poppy plants. And opium-free strains of the
plant, used for food or ornamental purposes, are also legal,
McLaughlin said.

Police say doda is popular among South Asian communities and that
demand for it is rising in Canada. In March, Peel, Ont., authorities
seized 1,282 kilograms of doda, worth $2.5 million, from locations in
Brampton, Toronto and Mississauga, Ont. Grocery, meat and flower shops
had been used as fronts for sales, police said.

There have been increasing numbers of cases of doda being imported
into the country and purchased by locals, but an opium-poppy growing
operation on the scale of the one alleged in Chilliwack, is
unprecedented in Canada, said police spokeswoman Cpl. Lea-Anne Dunlop.

"Once we started the investigation, we set out to find out what other
files of this nature existed, and the next closest we were able to
find was a backyard growing operation in the Calgary area," she said.
"This is the first commercial establishment."

Police believe an established organization must be behind this massive
growing operation.

"First of all, there has to be people involved in investing in the
poppies themselves," Goddard said. "Then you have a group of
individuals [who] set it all up and do the farming of the poppy.

"Once the poppy is grown ... there has to be another group of
individuals brought in to harvest it. Once it's subsequently
harvested, it has to go into a place where it is properly
manufactured."

Officers harvested the crop by hand in three-metre by three-metre
grids, and a local farmer has been contracted to eradicate the crop
and ensure it doesn't reproduce in coming seasons, Dunlop said.