U.S. DEMANDS CANADA CONTROL SALES OF COLD-REMEDY DRUG

Pseudoephedrine Smuggled Across Border

WASHINGTON and OTTAWA -- The United States demanded yesterday that Canada
change its laws and restrict the sale of pseudoephedrine, a cold remedy
that it says is being illegally shipped by the tonne across its borders,
where it is used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, or speed.

This unprecedented request arrives even as U.S. and Canadian politicians
seek to ease bilateral strains over U.S. efforts to tighten its borders in
the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

While the United States has gone out of its way to praise Canada in the war
on terrorism, when it comes to the war on drugs, diplomacy gives way to
demands.

"Canada has become the major source of pseudoephedrine used for the illegal
manufacture of methamphetamine in the United States," Customs Service
Commissioner Robert Bonner said yesterday at a press conference.

"We're hopeful that this operation and the illustration of this case will
move forward legislation in Canada that will regulate pseudoephedrine,
which is such a problem in the United States," said Asa Hutchison, director
of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

But drug-industry and government officials in Canada insisted yesterday
they were well aware of the abuse of pseudoephedrine, and were working as
quickly as the law allows to control its use. Carole Bouchard, director of
the office of controlled substances at Health Canada, said the government
issued a notice calling for public consultation on new regulations last spring.

Putting regulations in place for controlled substances takes time, she
said, because there are a number of interested parties who, under the law,
have a right to comment.

"We don't want to interfere with the legitimate business," Ms. Bouchard
said. The federal government expects to have the new regulations in place
by the end of the year.

For the U.S. government, however, patience with Canada on this issue has
clearly run out. During the past two years, U.S. drug and customs officials
have been cracking down on crime organizations that finance, manufacture
and distribute methamphetamine in the United States. A critical component
in its manufacture is pseudoephedrine, which is found in many cold remedies.

While the sale and distribution of pseudoephedrine in the United States is
strictly controlled, U.S. officials complain that the drug is so loosely
monitored in Canada that tractor-trailer loads of it, in pure form, are
being smuggled across the border to labs in California that produce
methamphetamine, also called crystal meth.

According to the DEA, the equivalent of one quarter of the pseudoephedrine
legally brought into Canada last year was seized at the Canada-U.S. border
as part of Operation Mountain Express III, a two-year operation to track
and disrupt the financing and manufacture of methamphetamine.

The world's leading exporters of the raw substance are China, India,
Germany and the Czech Republic.

The amount seized at the Ontario-Michigan and Ontario-Wisconsin borders
between April and December amounted to 16 tonnes, or 110 million tablets,
"enough to unplug every nose in Michigan for several years," Mr. Bonner,
the customs commissioner, said.

Some trucks used forged Federal Express and post-office logos, and the drug
was hidden in shipments of furniture, glass and even bubble gum.

Jerry Harrington, a spokesman for the Canadian Nonprescription Drug
Manufacturers, said yesterday that the increase in the import of the
antihistamine had been detected two years ago, and that imports had
exploded by more than 1,400-per-cent over the past year.

"There have been massive shipments, the kinds of things we'd never see," he
said.

It was at that point that the industry began working with Health Canada and
the RCMP to develop control regulations.

The RCMP and Canadian customs officials co-operated with their U.S.
counterparts in the border seizures, which led to the arrests yesterday of
54 individuals in 12 U.S. cities. A further 67 have already been arrested
in connection with illegal trafficking.