MARIJUANA INVADES U.S. - FROM NORTH

BLAINE, Wash. - For decades the drug-smuggling war has raged to the
south in Mexican border towns or along the sparkling waters of the
Caribbean.

But in the cool evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest, a new
front has opened up thanks to a potent breed of pricey Canadian
marijuana. B.C. Bud is so sought-after in the United States that it
has been known to trade on the street dollar for dollar with cocaine,
federal law enforcement officials say.

Named for its birthplace in British Columbia, the high-grade pot is
wreaking havoc on the once sleepy northern border and is moving
eastward. Smugglers are using kayaks, horse trailers, Army trucks and
even a cage holding a live bear to sneak it into the United States.
They tuck packages into fish meal or coffee to avoid drug-sniffing
dogs. Private planes dip into U.S. airspace and drop hockey bags
filled with the stuff to couriers waiting in the woods on ATVs.

While seizures of marijuana along the southern U.S. border declined in
fiscal year 2002, along the northern border they exploded -- soaring
more than 300 percent from the prior year, according to U.S. Customs
and Border Protection officials. In exchange, shipments of cocaine,
guns and money are flowing north to Canada.

"It's the new frontier," said Peter Ostrovsky, an agent with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement who came to the Northwest after
working drug cases in Miami.

"This is the only place in the U.S. I've seen where there's two-way
traffic. Drugs coming in and out."

The surge in seizures is due, at least in part, to heightened security
at the border in the wake of the terrorist attacks. More car trunks
are being popped and sophisticated new x-ray equipment allows agents
to peek inside idling tractor-trailers without ever opening a door.

Margaret Fearon, port director at the border checkpoint in this small
outpost 30 miles south of Vancouver, said that when more vehicles are
searched more drugs are found.

But law enforcement officials on both sides of the international
boundary also believe the amount of drugs on the move has risen.

The situation is so serious that the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration just stationed an agent in Vancouver. And the White
House, in its annual report on the global drug problem this year,
singled out Canada for the first time.

Things could get worse now that Canada appears poised to decriminalize
marijuana for personal use. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien's
administration introduced legislation in late May that would
essentially make possession of small amounts of pot equivalent to a
traffic ticket. But the bill also would boost penalties for growing
and trafficking marijuana.

While Britain and Australia have made similar moves to lessen
penalties for marijuana possession, it is Canada that shares a
4,000-mile land border with the United States, and American officials
are not pleased.

Canada and the United States do about $1 billion of trade a day and
top U.S. officials have warned their Canadian counterparts that easing
marijuana laws could lead to heightened inspections along the border,
said Jennifer de Vallance, a spokeswoman for the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are struggling to control the
explosion but admit their hands are tied by a justice system that is
notoriously lenient when it comes to marijuana.

Only rarely do marijuana offenders do jail time in Canada and when
they do it's for an average of just a few months, said Sgt. Brian
McDonald of the RCMP's Greater Vancouver Drug Section. Most of the
stiffer sentences have been struck down by the appeals courts, he said.

"We are hurt by the Canadian justice system. It's a gripe," said RCMP
Superintendent Bill Ard.

Police in Canada have had to make do with shutting down some of the
11,000 marijuana growing operations only to watch them spring up again
somewhere else.

In a sign of how permissive things have become, the counterculture
magazine High Times recently dubbed Vancouver as its top destination
for getting good pot, noting that having an indoor marijuana growing
room is "almost as common as having a den."

In British Columbia, it's estimated that B.C. Bud is a $2.8
billion-year industry, raking in more than the total for the
province's legitimate agriculture industry combined. The marijuana
plants are carefully nurtured indoors hydroponically -- rooted in
water and nutrients, not soil -- often using high-tech equipment to
precisely regulate temperature and light so that growers can harvest
up to six lucrative crops a year.

The resulting supercharged pot is worth about $2,000 a pound in the
Vancouver area. That price tag doubles as soon as it crosses the
border into the United States. Once it reaches Southern California, it
can reach $6,000 a pound.

Why such a demand? The high is a lot higher. Woodstock-era marijuana
had a THC content, or potency, of 2 percent. The current crop coming
in from Mexico runs an average of 6 percent. B.C. Bud's THC content
can rise to 25 percent.

The trade is run largely by Vietnamese gangs and outlaw biker gangs
like the Hell's Angels. Competition between them has become
increasingly violent, fueled by the guns that are streaming back into
Canada as part of the illicit drug trade, Ard of the RCMP said.

As security clamps down in western Washington state, some smugglers
have set their sights farther east on the more remote border in the
middle of the country and on border crossings in Detroit or Buffalo.

Some traffickers are even attempting to trek through the rough terrain
of the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

The Canadian haul still pales in comparison to the tonnage that is
flowing over from Mexico and other points south. In fiscal year 2002,
19,405 pounds were seized on the northern border compared to 1.2
million pounds on the southwest border, Customs figures show.

But Customs agents along the northern border said that doesn't take
into account the value of the crop. Canadian pot can be six to 20
times more expensive than the Mexican variety, according to the DEA.

U.S. and Canadian officials are working cooperatively to go after the
ringleaders.

The problem: The penalties are tougher in the United States, and most
of the kingpins are in Canada. John McKay, U.S. Attorney in Seattle,
said they are working on better extradition procedures and better
timing of arrests.

"There's a clear understanding that in some of these cases, it's a lot
better to let them get arrested in the United States," McKay said.