'METH' SCOURGE FEARED

Dealers Seeking Steady Market For Stimulant, City Police Say

City police believe local drug dealers are attempting to establish a steady
market in Winnipeg for crystal methamphetamine, a drug that continues to
plague North Dakota and has been linked to international terrorism.

Sgt. Lyle MacMillan of the Winnipeg Police Service's drug unit said police
are seeing more and more street sales of crystal methamphetamine.

"We're seeing increasing amounts being sold at the street level," MacMillan
said. "Our intelligence indicates that some of the dealers are giving it
away. The idea is to establish a market, to get people hooked."

MacMillan also said, "there's a strong possibility" the drug -- also known
as crank, meth or ice -- is being made in a clandestine lab or labs in
Manitoba. The drug can be easily manufactured using over-the-counter chemicals.

Police warned over a year ago that the drug was hitting Winnipeg streets.

"It is incumbent on the federal ministries responsible to recognize these
types of trends and be prepared to act quickly," said Sgt. Boyd Campbell,
president of the Manitoba Police Association. "When this type of...
substance available in Canada can be altered into a street drug, too often
they study things to death and in the meantime our fellow law-enforcement
agencies in other jurisdictions struggle."

Major Crime Staff Sgt. Doug Lofto added that the drug is going to be more
prominent.

"We know it's the drug of choice in Vancouver and although it's not a
problem in Western Canada, we know that it's coming. There's no doubt about
that," he said.

MacMillan and RCMP drug expert Cpl. Kevin Lamontagne said they could not
comment on whether the Manitoba chapter of the Hells Angels is behind the
increased sales of methamphetamine.

However, the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada and the U.S.-based
National Drug Intelligence Center say outlaw motorcycle gangs such as the
Hells Angels are historically major methamphetamine producers and
distributors in North America.

A Hells Angel member in Minneapolis was charged Oct. 1 with conspiring to
distribute cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana, allegedly from his
motorcycle shop.

American law-enforcement authorities also say the illegal trade in
methamphetamine in the U.S. has been linked to Mexican crime families as
well as Middle East terrorist groups like Hezbollah. The Drug Enforcement
Agency says suspects linked to terrorism were arrested a year ago
attempting to smuggle large quantities of the chemical pseudoephedrine from
Canada into the American Midwest. "Our biggest fear is people will start to
manufacture it locally and that this will create an epidemic like it has in
North Dakota and Minnesota, where it is a big, big problem," Lamontagne said.

Pseudoephedrine is used in some popular cold and allergy medications. In
the U.S., sales of pseudoephedrine are now restricted, but in Canada there
are no prohibitions.

One of the largest seizures of pseudoephedrine being smuggled from Canada
into the U.S. occurred a year ago in Grand Portage, Minn., just north of
Duluth. Last Oct. 10, U.S. Customs officers stopped a semi-truck loaded
with 6,000 pounds (or 10 million tabs) of the chemical, labelled as corn
starch. That shipment has also been linked to Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

Mike Ness, special drug agent of North Dakota's Bureau of Criminal
Investigation, said so far in 2002, police have closed down 187
methamphetamine labs. In 2001, police found 89 labs. In 2000, they
uncovered 46 labs.

"You haven't seen the onslaught we have," Ness said. "At the same time, we
don't see crack cocaine in the state. It's sporadic. The stimulant of
choice is meth."