USE OF HARDER DRUGS INCREASES IN SAULT

HASH OIL and marijuana reigned supreme when Sgt. Tom Kovacs joined the OPP
drug enforcement unit in 1995.

Back then, about 90 per cent of his cases involved vials of the dark,
sticky smokable substance or bags of pungent-smelling pot, but that's
changed, said the head of the OPP's drug enforcement section in Sault Ste.
Marie.

These days, you're just as likely to come across pills or bags of white
powder, Kovacs said. Seizures are split roughly 50-50 between the old
standbys, hash and marijuana, and harder drugs like cocaine and the
prescription drugs oxycodone and morphine.

"Over the last, let's say, five or six years, the quantity of cocaine and
the illegal trafficking of prescription drugs has skyrocketed in this
town," he said.

The explanation is nothing too complicated, said Kovacs.

"It's just a new market, a new drug that has made its way up to the
northern communities," he said. "The users seem to have taken a liking to it."

Crack cocaine is here too, but seemingly not on such a scale that it's
being imported, he said. Rather, it's being produced in basements and back
rooms for personal use.

What has also changed is the proliferation of home-grown marijuana.

Ordinary houses in the Sault are increasingly being snapped up by criminals
as the perfect hiding spot for a marijuana grow-op, says federal Crown
prosecutor Wayne Chorney.

In the late '80s and early '90s the Sault saw "the odd one," but in recent
years, he said, he's seen "a lot of situations" where homes are rented
specifically to grow pot.

"What's really aggravating is when they do it in someone else's home," said
Chorney.

Nine grow-ops have been discovered within city limits so far this year,
netting 19 charges of production, according to Sault Police Service
statistics. Those searches turned up 1,130 plants and marijuana estimated
to be worth more than $1.2 million on the street. All but one was an indoor
operation, the exception being a number of potted marijuana plants found in
a boat heading down Great Northern Road.

Because trafficking comes along with those operations, the criminal element
is being brought into otherwise friendly areas, often around children, said
Chorney.

"Where there's a grow operation, people are buying," he said.

While one case involving marijuana being sold over the Internet is ongoing,
Chorney said he doesn't see that as a trend.

Cultivators, though, are becoming more technically savvy, he said.
Cellphones, pagers and complex lamp setups and fertilizers have raised the
bar for grow-ops.

A bust that took place earlier this year at a Pine Street home was the
largest since Kovacs joined the drug unit in 1995. In that raid police
nabbed 700 plants with an estimated street value of $747,000.

That's still not your run-of-the-mill operation, says Kovacs. A typical
Sault grow-op is still "financially lucrative" but relatively
unsophisticated and produces somewhere between 25 and 200 plants.

Flaws in the investigation "tainted" the evidence and all police got in
court from that bust was a a guilty plea to simple possession of hash oil.

While Pine Street seems to be an anomaly, Kovacs said it could be a clue as
to what's on the horizon.

"Are there more in the city, of that size: probably," says Kovacs. "Have we
found them: no."

The "almost tropical" conditions required to grow pot -- Kovacs says a
typical grow house is kept hotter than 37 degrees -- have also led to a
spin-off crime: theft.

It's not uncommon these days for police to get a warrant asking for PUC
Inc. records to help identify a grow-op, said Randy Johnson, manager of
marketing and customer communications for the local power provider.

But in many cases there's nothing unusual to see.

"More often than not, anybody that's operating a grow is not going to run
through the meter to bring any unwanted attention to it," said Johnson.

Siphoning power illegally isn't necessarily a new thing -- those who
"dabble" in the electricity field have stolen power at different times over
the years "just to prove that it can be done," says Johnson -- but
wrangling wattage to support a criminal activity like a grow-up appears to
be a fairly recent development.

The proliferation of grow-ops in the Sault has also caused a headache for
the city's real estate brokers.

"We're trying to see how we can get a list of the houses involved because
it's illegal to sell anybody one of these houses until there's been proper
remedial work done," said Claudia Devoe, president of the Sault Ste. Marie
Real Estate Board.

Using a house to grow pot means mould comes along with it, as does an
electrical system that very likely has been tampered with, she added.

"The onus is on us to try to make sure we're not selling (home buyers) a
grow house, or a house that has been used as a grow house," she said.

Thursday: Are you at risk of becoming addicted to your prescription
painkillers?