POLICE DISPUTE P.G. POT CAPITAL REPORT

A newspaper story this week that stated Prince George leads the
province in marijuana grow-ops is unfounded, according to local RCMP.

A story in the Vancouver Province said Prince George has the highest
number of marijuana grow-operations per capita in the province. The
story cites research by University College of the Fraser Valley
professor Darryl Plecas, placing the number of grow-ops at well over
200 in this city.

"Not even close," said RCMP spokesperson Const. Mike Caira. "There is
no possible way the number is that high. If you talk individual drug
busts, that number is conceivable, but if you're talking
grow-operations, even counting the rural area, we might have at the
most 50 names of people arrested for that."

Plecas counters that his numbers are for grow-ops that are known to
police, not just the ones they execute search warrants for. He told
The Citizen that his two-year research project took him to every law
enforcement detachment in the province where they combed the records
to determine how many grow-ops were called in by the public or in some
other way discovered by police. He and his team went back seven years,
he said, to tally up the numbers for each community. They were careful
to not double-count a grow-op called in by more than one tipster, and
they were careful to include the multiple grow-ops at the same
address, if another sprang up later at the same location after a bust.
Methamphetamine labs were not counted in his data, he added.

"Again, certainly there are marijuana grows going on, tonnes we have
intelligence on, but whether or not we could extrapolate that into the
hundreds would be difficult," said Caira. "Little mom-and-pop
personal-use grows, maybe that would push the numbers into the
hundreds, but I don't think so if you are talking about an organized
grow-op for profit."

Plecas said: "I can tell you that over the past seven years (Prince
George) has experienced more than a 1,000-per-cent increase in
grow-ops. There has been no place in the province that equals the
increase they have had in Prince George," Plecas said. "On a
per-capita basis, Vancouver's proliferation of grow-ops pales by
comparison."

Caira and Plecas agree on one point: the booming grow-op industry is
orchestrated almost entirely by organized crime. Individual players
within big-business gangs handle hundreds of millions of illegal
dollars, funding much more sinister things than just unlawful
agricultural projects.

"We continue to have this culture in the courts where there is little
consequence for grows," said Plecas. "Judges are handing out sentences
that are just not realistic relative to the gain people get for having
a grow. The gain is so huge and the risk is so small."

He says the report will go into detail as to each B.C. community's
grow-op profile, and it will discuss the social consequences to this
renegade industry. The report, he says, will be released to the public
in early 2005.