CANADA IS METH CONDUIT

Seizures Of Raw Ingredient At Border Increase

TORONTO - The illegal production in the United States of popular stimulants
like methamphetamine reflects lax regulations in Canada for the chemical
ingredients, U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials said.

As a result, Canada has become the leading supply route for the raw
ingredient - typically in the form of decongestants - to the United States
where the substances are more tightly controlled.

In the last 11 months, the U.S. Customs Service has seized more than 110
million tablets of decongestants that contain the primary ingredient for
making methamphetamines, or "speed," as smugglers attempted to bring them
across the border among shipments of everything from furniture to glassware.

The seizures have become so huge that Robert C. Bonner, the commissioner of
the U.S. Customs Service, recently joked that enough decongestant had been
confiscated from one truck "to unplug about every nose in Michigan for
several years."

That truck had crossed the Ambassador Bridge into Detroit last year from
Canada where the decongestant, pseudoephedrine, is perfectly legal and
freely obtained even though it is a tightly controlled substance in the
United States.

Canada's connection to illegal U.S. methamphetamine production arose after
Washington tightened controls over pseudoephedrine several years ago, and
as trafficking routes through Mexico were shut down. Now, an alliance of
diverse organized crime groups stretching from Mexico to Iraq and Jordan
have found Canada an easy entry point into a growing U.S. market for
synthetic drugs.

Canadian businesses legitimately import the chemical substance in powder
form mostly from China.

Those imports have increased 14 times since 1995, U.S. and Canadian law
enforcement officials said. Some of that has helped Canadian cold sufferers
in the form of decongestants manufactured by several Canadian
pharmaceutical companies.

But a large portion of it has entered the U.S. black market for
methamphetamine, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Canadian
officials said.

"The diversion of pseudoephedrine from Canadian suppliers to the illicit
market is reaching a critical level," according to an intelligence report
by the Drug Enforcement Administration and Royal Canadian Mounted Police in
January.

As methamphetamine, which gives users a seductive rush of power, confidence
and energy, has grown in popularity since the mid-1990s, it has become a
priority for law enforcement officials.

The drug is an especially addictive narcotic that can cause brain damage
and aggressive behavior and has been linked to 60,000 admissions a year in
U.S. hospitals.

Under prodding from the Bush administration, Canada has acknowledged the
trafficking problem and the government here is drafting a number of
regulations on pseudoephedrine imports and exports as well as enforcement
strategies to close the Canadian connection.