Marijuana.com

xxdr_zombiexx

This Bud's For The U.S.
TIME | By ANITA HAMILTON | Sunday, Aug. 15, 2004

Canada's relaxed drug laws may be fueling a boom in marijuana exports to America

It was the bus driver who noticed something suspicious. According to school officials, a driver for Blaine High School in northwestern Washington State thought something was strange about students' carrying unusually full bags to school and then never taking them back home.

He alerted U.S. authorities, who boarded the bus on the morning of Feb. 20 and allegedly found 8 lbs. of marijuana, valued at $25,000, hidden inside a teenage girl's backpack. Prosecutors allege that the minor, 16, was getting paid $300 a trip to work as a drug mule for smugglers moving marijuana into the U.S. from Canada. The teen's home, in Point Roberts, Wash., borders British Columbia in an area with relatively light border patrol, which would have made it easy for her to get the drugs from Canada before getting on the bus.

Expelled from school and charged with possessing marijuana with intent to deliver, the girl has a hearing scheduled for Aug. 23 in Bellingham, Wash. Deputy prosecutor Thomas Verge has said he will probably ask for an exceptionally long sentence that would put the teen behind bars until her 21st birthday. The controversy has upset the community. "She was a wonderful young girl," says her principal, Dan Newell. "I wouldn't have ever thought that if anyone was going to haul marijuana across the border, it would be this lady."

Nor would anyone have thought that the cross-border traffic of illegal drugs would become one of the knottiest areas of disagreement between the U.S. and its northern neighbor. An estimated 880 to 2,200 tons of marijuana are grown in Canada, according to a new report from Canadian police. About 90% of the commercial crop winds up in the U.S., where its street value ranges from $5 billion to $25 billion. Although only 5% of pot in the U.S. comes from Canada, the trade is flourishing because of high demand in the U.S. and the comparatively mild punishments in Canada for growers and traffickers.

The U.S. seized more than 48,000 lbs. of marijuana along the Canadian border last year, nearly double the 26,000 lbs. it retrieved in 2002, according to a U.S. State Department report. There have been seizures all along the border, in Montana, North Dakota, Michigan, Ohio and other states. Canadian pot has cachet in the U.S. because of its reputation for being especially potent. The featured brand is BC Bud — which is grown in British Columbia and has become synonymous with the high-grade marijuana grown throughout Canada. Once in the U.S., the pot is exchanged for cash, and sometimes cocaine or guns, which are then smuggled back to Canada.

Although the actual potency of BC Bud varies from batch to batch, depending on how it's grown, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says that as much as 25% of BC Bud is made of the psychoactive drug tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). In contrast, the pot that the hippie generation smoked in the 1970s had only 2% THC content, and most pot consumed in the U.S. today averages about 7% THC.

[zombienote: The lying never ceases.]

White House drug czar John Walters blames BC Bud in part for the increased number of pot-related emergency room incidents, which have more than doubled, from 54,000 in 1996 to 119,000 in 2002. Those incidents range from accidents and injuries to unexpected reactions to the drug. "Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana," Walters told reporters in April. Others dispute Walters' claims. "Domestic American marijuana is probably a little bit better," says Richard Stratton, editor in chief of High Times, a magazine that covers marijuana issues. But the BC Bud name is so well regarded that some dealers pass off other varieties as Canadian to fetch the $3,000-to-$10,000-per-lb. price. And BC Bud seems to be everywhere. "It's hella easy to get," says "Angelo," 22, a Seattle resident who asked to be identified by a pseudonym. "You can usually go to [a convenience store] between 1:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. and ask people who you think smoke bud," he says.

On the Canadian side, the drug is even more ubiquitous. At the popular New Amsterdam Cafe in downtown Vancouver, customers openly smoke marijuana. "People come with pot. We are a business, though, so we have a $2 minimum cafe charge [for snacks and drinks]," says cafe manager Scott Heardy. Inspector David Nelmes, who is in charge of drugs for the Vancouver police department, tells TIME, "I can't remember the last time a member of the Vancouver police department arrested someone for smoking a joint. Frankly, who's got time?" If passed within the year, as seems likely, new Canadian legislation would decriminalize possession of less than 15 grams of marijuana, meaning that offenders would be slapped with only the equivalent of a traffic ticket. That approach is a far cry from the one that is taken in U.S. states like Oklahoma, where a person caught smoking dope could get up to a year in prison, although probation is more common.

Canada's attitude toward small-scale toking up has led some U.S. officials to blame the northerners for the influx of BC Bud in America. "If the perception is that it will be easier to get marijuana in Canada ... then it creates problems at the border," Paul Cellucci, U.S. ambassador to Canada, said at a Toronto Board of Trade dinner in February. Indeed, the trade has led to an increase in drive-by shootings in Canada by rival dealers, and to "grow-rips," in which competing clans break into growers' houses to steal their crops, according to Canadian police. The body of the suspected ringleader of a trafficking group was found stabbed in the neck in a ditch in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in November 2002. "It's still a dangerous drug," says James Capra, the DEA's chief of domestic operations. "People are killing each other over it."

Currently, a grower in Canada who has been convicted can expect less than two years of house arrest and a trafficker anywhere from three months to five years, served either at home or in prison, compared with the minimum punishment of five to 10 years that most convicted traffickers and growers receive in U.S. federal court. But as the violence has increased and cultivation of the crop has moved into residential areas, Canada has begun cracking down on its estimated 50,000 commercial pot growers. Over the past four years, police in Vancouver have seized $288 million worth of marijuana and $8.7 million worth of growing equipment. In Barrie, Ont., in January, police confiscated 30,000 marijuana plants, worth $23 million, inside a former Molson brewery.

One hot, muggy morning in July, a TIME reporter accompanied the Vancouver police as an officer thumped on the door of a two-story brick-and-panel house on a leafy street of manicured lawns. Inside, officers discovered a basement filled wall to wall with more than 300 glossy female cannabis bushes. That bust is pretty routine, but the BC Bud keeps flowing. In the past four years, Vancouver police have made more than 1,500 others, or about one a day.

— Reported by Ben Bergman/Blaine, Laura Blue/New York, Chris

[zombienote: And they have accomplished what, exactly?]

__________________
Alien Space Signal

There's no money for your issue so long as we're squandering $50 billion a year on the DrugWar. Ben Masel

Fear became the ultimate tool of this government - V.

 

JTP

He alerted U.S. authorities, who boarded the bus on the morning of Feb. 20 and allegedly found 8 lbs. of marijuana, valued at $25,000, hidden inside a teenage girl's backpack. Prosecutors allege that the minor, 16, was getting paid $300 a trip to work as a drug mule for smugglers moving marijuana into the U.S. from Canada. The teen's home, in Point Roberts, Wash., borders British Columbia in an area with relatively light border patrol, which would have made it easy for her to get the drugs from Canada before getting on the bus.


Now this girl is screwed, all for $300. How big a piece of crap do you have to be to use a kid as your mule?

Herb Ninja

This girl was providing a service, no worse then truckdrivers who bring legal tobacco over the border. Their was large supply in canada, and high demand in America. Economically it was a smart move. Unfortunatly its not a world of free trade, especially when it comes to certain plants. Now shes going to have to go through nearly endless legal bullsh!t... and the most harm that would have happened is somebody eating an extra slice of pizza. Peace, HN-

__________________
Ron Paul for the Long Haul

krychick

The controversy has upset the community. "She was a wonderful young girl," says her principal, Dan Newell. "I wouldn't have ever thought that if anyone was going to haul marijuana across the border, it would be this lady."

*Was* a wonderful young girl? Why not still, just because of her assosiation with some weed? Ridiculous.

PotShot

It would be interesting to see exactly what the U.S. would do if Canada did a full lift of prohibition...

2%?
Who would ever smoke 2% herb? It is dissapointing to see this stuff coming out of Time

First off.... crack of marijuana


It is too bad that I can't go to a store, and buy some pot. There it would be labeled, so then I would know if it was BC or not. I guess that makes a little too much sense

__________________
Posting Guidelines

Carl Sagan Goodness Richard Dawkins Goodness

 

xxdr_zombiexx

Homeland Security begins air surveillance of Canadian border
SF GAte.com | GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer | 08-20 15:16 PDT BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP)

As part of a dramatic boost in surveillance of the Canadian border, federal customs and immigration officials on Friday dedicated the first of five planned bases for regular flights to look for drug runners and others crossing illegally.

The Bellingham Air Marine Branch is scheduled to throw 69 people, two helicopters, a new airplane and a high-speed boat into the border enforcement effort. Although similar bases have policed the Mexican border for three decades, the new facility is the first on the Canadian border.

Previously, customs and immigration service aircraft have patrolled the border only sporadically, even though much of the border is in rugged and largely empty country that presents little challenge to a determined smuggler.

"If they can get drugs through, they can get terrorists through," Darrell Feller, a pilot for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said during a helicopter tour of the border near Blaine.

The new bases, which will dot the border from Washington state to upstate New York, are a response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as well as ongoing smuggling of illegal aliens and drugs, including British Columbia's potent strains of marijuana.

"Smuggling is a two-way street," agency spokesman Michael Milne said. "We've got cocaine and money going north, B.C. bud and human smuggling coming south."

A second station in Plattsburgh, N.Y., is scheduled by the end of the year, Milne said, followed by bases near Detroit; Grand Forks, N.D.; and Great Falls, Mont.

The Bellingham base won't initially have enough money to operate 24 hours a day, but will be able to fly patrols about eight hours each day.

"Our greatest asset right now is they don't know when we're going to be operating," said Mitch Pribble, a pilot and associate field director for the office.

Many airfields in southern British Columbia are within 10 minutes of the border, Feller said.

"In the middle of the night, it doesn't take very long to get down to the U.S., drop something off and get back," Feller said.

The new aircraft will allow agents to track suspicious flights where the pilot doesn't report to customs or talk on the radio. Federal pilots will follow such aircraft or direct agents on the ground.

The new people and equipment will also help the day-to-day work of the Border Patrol, although they won't be under the agency's direct control, said Joe Giuliano, the patrol's assistant chief in Blaine.

"It can only help us," Giuliano said. "We have tools now, but if you give us more, we can do more."

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said Congress earmarked $35.2 million in the current fiscal year to get the Bellingham station up and running.

"I feel like the northern border is finally getting its due," said Murray, D-Wash.

[zombienote: Either this will be ineffective, or it will drive up both the street price of the dreaded BC Bud as well as profits for illegal trafficking. It's just like a law of physics.]

xxdr_zombiexx

This is exactly what I mean when I say "marijuana hate speech".

We have the ghost of Anslinger here - the man who almost single-handedly invented all the bushllit lies about marijuana - the gateway idea, the idea you will die from heroin if you smoke pot.

Anslinger dropped dead before crack was invented, but he sure as hell would be saying the same lame crap that oozes out of Walters' face.

king cola

One thing about the marijuana in the 60s-70s, they didn't test the THC in every strain! What they did was took low grade shwag and tested the THC in that which only had 2% THC. I wasn't around in the 60s or 70s but my father was. He smoked strong strains like colombian gold, panama red, thai. He just laughs when they say the pot today is stronger than what he smoked because he just says they obviously weren't smokin the stuff he had to be able to make that assumption. If 1 joint was enough to put a few people out, that's more than 2%. The strong strains from the 60s and 70s they didn't test would have more than likely matched the strongest strains avaiable now! We also need to think of it this way, the stronger the pot, the less your going to smoke to get the desired effect(less smoke in the lungs). The techniques for growing might have changed in the past 30 or 40 years but if anything the pot might be a little stronger than the strongest strains from years ago or they might even be equal. $300 is a lot of money for this girl but i mean it wasn't worth it. She was carrying $25,000 worth and making a pathetic $300 while the people who gave it to her and the people who took it from her were making thousands and thousands of dollars, cheap bastards! I'm also sick and tired of hearing about BC bud! It's not the only strong strain in the world but as*holes like john ashcroft seem to try hard to convince people it is!

Weed_Demon_420

I dont think the United States would have people killing other people for marijuana, if marijuana was legal. As a matter of fact, if the best weed was grown in the U.S.A it would be legalized, and if was legal in the U.S pharmasutical company's would monopolize it and make it unofordable.

kevstermon

Smuggling is a two-way street," agency spokesman Michael Milne said. "We've got cocaine and money going north, B.C. bud and human smuggling coming south."

Funny they never mention how much cocaine or guns are confiscated going into Canada. I guess that crack form of pot is more of a priority than actual crack.