CANADA'S MARIJUANA HAVEN

Pot Smokers Call B.C.'S Biggest City Vansterdam, A Sly Reference To Europe's
Marijuana Utopia In Holland. It Lives Up To The Name.

Marijuana crusader Marc Emery, a former Londoner now widely recognized as
B.C.'s "prince of pot," has long predicted his favourite weed would be
decriminalized.

"There's been a breakthrough in medical use. I haven't been arrested in
three years and the mayor of Vancouver, who used to crusade against me, is
now saying legalization is inevitable," he told The Free Press two years
ago.

For 17 years, Emery was known as the gregarious, outrageously opinionated
founder and owner of City Lights Book Shop on Richmond Street in downtown
London.

Now 45 and living in Vancouver, he's one of the world's biggest dealers in
marijuana seeds, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, founder of Pot-TV
on the Internet and president of the B.C. Marijuana Party, which ran
candidates in all 79 ridings in the last provincial election.

After doing battle with the police and courts for nearly a decade, Emery can
point to signs his decriminalization dream may come true sooner than later.

The commanding officer of the Vancouver police vice and drug section, the
man who is on the front line of the country's fiercest battle against
marijuana growers, believes the drug should be legalized.

Not an easy position for one of Canada's top cops.

But Insp. Kash Heed has rarely done anything the easy way. He is one of a
select few on the prosecution side of the drug war willing to think outside
the box, conventional wisdom be damned.

"I think I give more of a contemporary solution," said Heed, an unflinching
cop who has been thrust into the headlines and turned into a quasi-celebrity
because of his policing methods.

"Sometimes it's not appreciated by others, people in policing. Sometimes I
even have problems convincing people in my own organization.

"But the prohibition of marijuana use has been a failure."

Heed now concentrates his policing efforts on "grow operations" and has just
about given up on possession.

When it comes to marijuana growth in B.C. during the past decade, the
statistics the police arm themselves with are utterly overwhelming.

In 1991, the Vancouver police drug unit busted 23 grow operations estimated
to be worth $2.6 million. In 2001, led by Heed, they took out 635 with a
value of $160 million -- unquestionably a lot but a staggeringly minute
percentage of what the police claim is being grown each year.

How much pot is being grown in B.C.? No one really knows.

The province's Organized Crime Agency has studied the issue and estimates
the pot industry wholesale at $6 billion.

That would place it among the largest industries in the province, comparable
in size to logging and forest products ($5.6 billion), mining ($3.7 billion)
and manufacturing ($3.4 billion).

The OCA estimates there are 25,000 provincial grow operations employing up
to 150,000 people, making marijuana one of the province's biggest employers.

The OPP estimates the scale of Ontario's operations is three years behind
British Columbia.

Police in Ontario have been calling Heed, "especially in the past year,"
trying to understand the problems they are now facing.

"It was British Columbia's problem for years. But once the problem went east
of the Rockies, it became Canada's problem," Heed said.

"Now they will begin to see what we have been dealing with."

Heed has sided with pro-marijuana lobby groups in a belief the only way to
stop the crime associated with marijuana, the only way to take out the
organized crime, is to legalize it.

Pot smokers call B.C.'s biggest city Vansterdam, a sly reference to Europe's
marijuana utopia in Holland. It lives up to the name.

In Vancouver, on a spring-like winter day, tourists are baffled when they
walk along the shopping district on Robson Street, following long trails of
pot smoke as police stand idly by.

On a weekend evening, Colin wants to score some pot on his way home from
watching a high school basketball game. He stops in the city's bar district
on Granville Street.

The area is buzzing, there are long lineups at several night clubs.

Colin isn't interested. He barely has to get out of the cab before he
catches a man's attention.

Five minutes later, Colin is back in the cab, on his way home with $40 of
high-grade marijuana.

A cop is near but he's not paying attention.

Along West Hastings Street, a string of "pot cafes" no different than any in
Amsterdam -- where pot rather than caffeine is the drug of choice -- are
probably Canada's most visible sign of defiance against the prohibition of
marijuana.

Last year, Vancouver was voted the world's best tourist destination for
marijuana smokers, according to High Times magazine, selected over perennial
winner Amsterdam.

The city's "pot cafes," the seeming tolerance for bud and the availability
of locally grown pot were all factors.

"You could walk down the street (smoking pot) and no one bothers you,"
editor Dan Skye says.

Tourists agree.

"This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen," said Seattle's Ryan Gan,
22, in one of the cafes on a recent visit.

"Here I am, allowed to smoke all the marijuana I want without worrying about
cops."

Small-scale possession is virtually unenforced by the police department. The
Vancouver cops call it de facto decriminalization.

Police in Ontario call it giving up.

"I think in B.C. they've surrendered," said Chief Julian Fantino of Toronto.

"We're going to do what we can to fight the problems that come with
marijuana."

Those are words that make Heed cringe.

"I get accused of a lot of things, as any officer does who takes a more
liberal view of enforcement," he said.

"Sometimes it bothers me but most other times it just makes me stronger and
makes me work harder to get policing to come into the 21st century."

There is a powerful majority behind Heed. A recent Sun-Leger poll on
Canadians' pot-smoking habits shows 91 per cent of British Columbians think
marijuana laws should be less stringent while 53 per cent said they had
smoked marijuana.