TEMPTED BY THE MONEY

You would think few people would agree to stuff condoms full of cocaine
down their throat or push a surgical glove full of heroin in their rectum.
And you would be wrong.

There is no shortage of Canadian drug mules and packers, ready to travel
abroad for shipments.

However, police say the community organizing cross-border imports is
close-knit, and relatively small.

"Money -- it all comes down to the dollar," explains RCMP Supt. Ron Allen,
who's in charge of the GTA Drug Section for the Mounties.

For shipments worth tens or hundreds of thousands on the street, mules can
be paid as little as a week in the sun or a few thousand dollars.

Allen has chased big drug smugglers off the east coast -- pictures of the
yachts found loaded with cocaine decorate his office walls -- and he has
seen how creative small drug runners can be while trying to sneak an
estimated 24 tonnes of cocaine into Canada each year. They included a woman
who arrived in Toronto with two kilos of cocaine hidden in her wig.

And it's not just to Canada. Last year, at least 60 Jamaican drug mules a
week were being arrested at London's Heathrow Airport.

Mules who are caught after landing in Toronto are doing better than those
nabbed in foreign countries. In Jamaica, you can be in prison for years.

But recently, Canadian justice officials have noticed a trend by some
Ontario courts to treat trans-shipping drug mules as victims of
circumstance. They've been given light sentences, with police being told to
go get the drug barons, rather than the couriers.