OTTAWA'S MARIJUANA PLAN IRKS US

OTTAWA -- Canada's plan to decriminalize marijuana, making possession of
the country's potent weed no more serious than a traffic ticket, has the
Bush administration fuming. The view from Washington is that the mellowing
of Canadian drug law will result in even more smuggled bales of ''B.C.
Bud,'' ''Quebec Gold,'' and ''Winnipeg Wheelchair'' -- the last so named
because of its supposedly disabling effect on users -- reaching American
pot puffers.

For years, Canadian courts, if not police, have taken a far more lax
attitude toward marijuana than do most jurisdictions in the United States.
Such a laissez-faire approach, according to law enforcement officials on
both sides of the border, has enabled biker gangs and Asian organized crime
groups to make Canada a powerhouse of hydroponic pot production, with
thousands of high-tech, indoor operations in British Columbia, Manitoba,
and Quebec yielding hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of heady product.

''Most of it is going straight to the US market,'' said a senior drug
investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, requesting anonymity.
That southward flow of Canadian cannabis explains why the proposed easing
of the marijuana law is fast becoming a serious source of friction between
Ottawa and Washington.

In terms of tonnage, Canada accounts for only a small share of the
marijuana smuggled into the United States. But in terms of value, some drug
enforcement officials believe Canadian pot has surpassed Mexico's and
Colombia's among US consumers because its high levels of
tetrahydrocannabinol -- THC, the stuff that gives pot its pow -- commands
much higher prices. In American cities, high-grade Canadian grass fetches
more than $5,000 a pound, according to drug agencies.

Last week, Prime Minister Jean Chretien surprised the United States by
announcing he plans to put a bill before Parliament that will make
possession and cultivation of small amounts of marijuana a noncriminal
offense. The aim, he said, is not to legalize pot but to ensure that casual
users don't end up with criminal records if caught with a few joints in
their pockets or a few plants flourishing under basement grow-lights.

Public opinion polls show a majority of Canadians support decriminalization
of marijuana, while 47 percent endorse outright legalization.

Countries such as Britain and Australia also have taken steps to remove
criminal penalties for so-called personal marijuana use. But Britain and
Australia don't share a 5,525-mile border with a superpower whose official
drug policy is ''zero tolerance.'' Within hours of Chretien's pledge,
Washington was voicing displeasure and hinting at tighter borders.

''You expect your friends to stop the movement of poison toward your
neighborhood,'' John Walters, director of the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy, told Canadian journalists. ''We have to be
concerned about American citizens. . . . When you make the penalties
minimal, you get more drug production, you get more drug crime.''

David Murray, special assistant to President Bush's drug policy director,
flew to Vancouver and pronounced Chretien's decriminalization initiative
''a matter we look upon with some concern and some regret.'' Marijuana is
smoked openly in cafes in the western Canadian city, which is known to
tokers as Vansterdam, after the Dutch capital where marijuana is legal.

Saying the United States already is fighting a ''flood of illicit
substances'' from Canada, Murray warned that if the Chretien government
loosens penalties on pot it may face tighter border security to combat drug
trafficking. Such a crackdown would harm the billion-dollar-a-day trade
ties between the two neighbors, with Canadian exporters -- economically
dependent on the United States -- taking a painful hit.

''We would have no choice but to respond,'' Murray said, echoing the view
of many law enforcement officials that Canadian marijuana is so uncommonly
potent it should be considered a hard drug, not a harmless high. ''This
isn't Woodstock,'' he said of B.C. Bud and other varieties that have gained
fame among inhalers.

Hydroponic marijuana is grown indoors using heavily fertilized water,
high-power lights, high heat, humidity, and lately, sophisticated plant
genetics. As a result, Canadian weed has average THC levels of 15 percent
to 20 percent while the primo stuff tops out at a mind-numbing 34 percent.
Latin American pot, by contrast, has an average THC content of about 6
percent. Garden variety reefer smoked by hippies of the Woodstock era had
THC levels of about 2 percent. ''The ingredient that gets you high has been
perfected by Canadian cultivators,'' a US drug enforcement agent said.
''And way too much of it is already coming our way.''

Drug traffic from Canada is largely controlled by the Hells Angels
motorcycle gang, which is especially powerful in British Columbia and
Quebec, and by Vietnamese crime syndicates operating from Vancouver. The
smugglers can be extraordinarly bold -- in March, a helicopter swooped into
Vermont from Quebec and disgorged 250 pounds of marijuana to a waiting
confederate near the rural town of Lowell, 15 miles inside the border.

Relations between Canada and the United States are generally at the most
rancorous level in decades, the result of trade tiffs, Canadian refugee
policies that have given the country the reputation of being a haven for
terrorists, personal insults flung at President Bush by members of
Chretien's government, and most recently, Ottawa's refusal to support the
war in Iraq.

Canadian news coverage of decriminalization has focused less on the pros
and cons of the issue than on the efforts of Uncle Sam to weigh in. ''First
we're soft on Saddam, now we're soft on pot,'' stated a recent article in
the Toronto Star, which went on to describe the White House as ''stuck in a
time warp, taking the world back to an earlier era of Reefer Madness.''

Canadian leaders say removing criminal sanctions against people caught with
1.1 ounces or less of pot will allow police to concentrate on large-scale
dealers and smugglers. Deputy Prime Minister John Manley called the US
notion that decriminalization will lead to increased trafficking ''a bit of
a leap.''