GIANT POT BUST INSIDE FORMER BREWERY LIKELY LARGEST IN CANADA, POLICE SAY

BARRIE, Ontario (AP) -- A marijuana "factory" concealed within a sprawling
old brewery just steps from one of Ontario's busiest highways is proof
Canada's pot problem has reached "epidemic proportions," police said Monday.

The former Molson brewery in Barrie, Ontario, plainly visible from Highway
400, one of the province's busiest commuter routes, was raided on the
weekend by some 100 city and provincial police officers acting on a tip.

Inside, police found marijuana with what they said had an estimated street
value of $30 million, along with a grow operation of staggering proportions
- - the largest and most sophisticated in modern Canadian history.

"This is not a ma-and-pa operation," Barrie police Chief Wayne Frechette
wryly told a news conference in this central Ontario city an hour's drive
north of Toronto.

Across a 5,400-square meter complex the size of a football field, police
found more than 25,000 pot plants growing everywhere - even inside the
cavernous indoor vats once used to brew beer.

Molson closed the brewery in 2000 and sold it to a company that leases
space to about half a dozen businesses. The other companies included
trucking companies and a bottling company, police said. ---