PART ONE: THE COPS VS. LOCAL MARIJUANA GROWERS

You can smell it in the air, either on the local streets or hillsides - and
people in Parliament and the rest of the country are buzzing about it.
Today, Kathy Kiel will take you with the RCMP as they execute a "marijuana
eradication project." This is the first of a three-part series on the pot
industry in B.C. In part two Darren Davidson will explore the Senate's
ground-breaking recommendation that possession of the drug be legalized.

Dope growers are playing the game. Sometimes they win and sometimes they
don't. And when they don't, they lose big, big B.C. bud.

But unlike major league baseball games, it's not the Goodyear blimp that
hovers over the fields of joy - in the Slocan Valley it's the RCMP chopper.

At Friday's game, the cops came out on top after they scored half-million
dollars worth of pot in someone's backyard. On this day they hit a Grand Slam.

"It's more fun than going to Disneyland," said Cst. Darrell Robinson after
he and four other members sweat their pants off hacking down the outdoor
grow-op. "And I've been to Disneyland."

Commercial ventures like these, when spotted, are destroyed by Mounties.
They say they're not destroying what was recently reported as B.C.'s number
one industry because they're doing it for health and for healthy children.

Sgt. Bill Romanica flies the Bell Longranger II helicopter 1,000 feet over
the valley, just three minutes away from New Denver. His eye has, through
experience, been trained to spot dark green patches of pot tucked away in
the relatively unpopulated, greenish river valley.

"You can't rely on computers and satellites [to find the grows], you've got
to go there and look yourself," said Romanica.

Other ways to sleuth out a crop is by looking for clearings to allow sun
for photosynthesis, access to water such as a creek or swamp, and trail or
road accesses.

Usually there is some order to the plants' layout. They often are in
row-like sequences, said Romanica.

"It shouldn't be cultivated, it's the wild."

After the RCMP Kelowna Air Section employee spots a grow from the air, he
radios down to the three-man ground crew travelling below in a 4 x 4 crew
cab pick-up. Along with packing heat, the officers carry basic gardening
sheers, twine and plenty of water in hydration packs.

The frontline crew receives the GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates
from the pilot to help locate the cash crop. They also rely on the pilot's
navigation to find the easiest route into the sight.

"It's not that easy. When you land the helicopter and start to walk up and
find it there's a lot of bush," said Nelson Cst. Tom Clark, the drug
awareness officer for the Nelson district.

If the area spotted isn't on someone's private property the police will go
in and chop down the plants. If the marijuana is without flowers or buds,
they will leave the destroyed plants at the site. If the plants are full
of buds they may sling it by helicopter and dump in in a nearby lake or
swamp. Or they can choose to take it to the once-regularly-running burner
at Slocan Forest Products.

If the grow op is found on private land, the Mounties will stop in at the
residence to give them a heads-up as to what's happening. In Friday's
case, where about 400 plants were seized, they did not lay charges on the
suspected grower.

"We informed them right as soon as we came onto the property that we
wouldn't be pressing charges" said Robinson. "We were basically here to
harvest the crop."

The response to the eradication is usually one of understanding, as this
grower was, said Robinson.

"He was very polite. His words were, 'It's part of the game.' This year
he didn't get to crop and other years he did. That's just how it works out."

The police say they only have the resources to do a two-day project in the
New Denver/Slocan Valley area. However, there's so much pot that they
could work in the valley for well over a week. But the cost of flying the
helicopter at $500 an hour and the manpower needed would put a definite
strain on their budget.

That's why they usually decide not to press charges to growers because of
the "phenomenal" added cost it adds in enforcement and to the judicial system.

"The biggest thing of course is we're doing this by consent," said Clark,
who's been in drug enforcement for 20 years. "Because if we went to a
place and the person said 'no you can't [cut the plants] then we'd have to
arrest them, we'd have to get a search warrant and then we'd have to come
back and lay charges."

Their eradication efforts are not wasted since they aren't pressing
charges, they say. They're not worried about defraying the cost of the
operation because it just doesn't work that way. It still pays off big.

"We seized probably half a million dollars in dope," said Ken Harrington
who was fittingly wearing a "D.A.R.E. to keep children off drugs" hat for
the day. "So that's a half million dollars of dope that we keep off the
streets. The people that grow aren't supported by that income. Our young
people, as far as we are concerned, are safer."