NATIONWIDE DRUG BUSTS WEED OUT $50M IN POT

Calgary cops took part in a series of nationwide marijuana busts yesterday
which took nearly $50 million worth of pot off the streets.

By the end of "Operation Green Sweep" police forces across Canada had laid
289 charges against 136 suspects. Officers raided two homes in Calgary,
including one in Bridlewood, where they seized 372 marijuana plants with a
street value of $372,000, Insp. Murray Stooke of the organized crime
section said.

City cops also recovered $12,500 worth of specialized equipment used to
grow marijuana, $695 in cash, and arrested two suspects.

Stooke said the more worrying aspects of the city raid was that children
were in one home to watch the seizures, and a marijuana extraction
laboratory was also dismantled in one of the homes.

Home-grown pot is an ever-increasing problem in Calgary, he said. In 2000,
the local drug unit took out 58 hydroponic growing operations, seizing $4.7
million worth of marijuana. But in 2001, raids had increased to 65, where
officers seized almost $10 million worth of pot.

Operation Green Sweep took out 46,796 marijuana plants in simultaneous
swoops in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova
Scotia.

Stooke said although marijuana was a lucrative money-spinner for organized
crime across the nation, the targets hit in the operation weren't
necessarily connected.

At least 500 officers were involved across the nation, and in addition to
the pot seized, more than $3.2-million worth of hydroponics equipment was
recovered.

In at least 90 target homes, the pot-growers had bypassed the electrical
power to the house, and children were inside at least 28 of them.