I didn't know weed induced such violence and evil
From the NY Times:
Violent New Front in Drug War Opens on the Canadian Border
By SARAH KERSHAW
Published: March 5, 2005
SEATTLE, March 2 - The drugs move across the Canadian border inside huge tractor-trailer rigs, pounds and pounds stashed in drums of frozen raspberries, tucked in shipments of crushed glass, wood chips and sawdust, or crammed into hollowed-out logs, in secret compartments that agents refer to as "coffins."
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Kayakers paddle them south from British Columbia across the freezing bays of America's northwest corner, and well-paid couriers carry up to 100 pounds at a time in makeshift backpacks, hiking eight hours over the rugged mountainous terrain that forms part of the border between the United States and Canada. Small planes drop them onto raspberry fields and dairy farms in hockey bags equipped with avalanche beacons to alert traffickers that the drugs have landed.
The contraband is called B.C. bud, a highly potent form of marijuana named for the Canadian province where it is grown, and it has become the center of what law enforcement officials say is an increasingly violent $7 billion cultivation and smuggling industry.
On Thursday, four officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were shot to death in Alberta, British Columbia's neighboring province, as they were searching a marijuana-growing operation, one of many on the rise there. The killings stunned a country that has apparently not lost that many officers at once since the mid-19th century.
Leigh H. Winchell, special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle, which investigates border crimes and is part of the Department of Homeland Security, said the police killings in Alberta were stark evidence of "how serious the B.C. bud issue is getting, how much money is involved and the lengths to which these criminals are willing to go to protect it."
He added, "It's getting worse and worse, and we need to address it at every level. The funding needs to be there, and the resolve of law enforcement to address it needs to be there - on both sides of the border. It's a very dark day for all of us."
This new wave of drug trafficking, with Northwest Washington and Seattle a major transit point, comes as an enormous challenge to United States law enforcement agents stationed along the often invisible northern border. They are already dealing with the threat of terrorism, the flow of immigrants and new human smuggling operations - some run by some of the Canadian criminal organizations that move the marijuana south and cash, cocaine and guns north, American and Canadian law enforcement officials say.
The situation is also spotlighting sharp differences in the way the two countries deal with drug crimes, with some officials and experts on both sides of the border saying Canada's less stringent drug laws have made it harder to stem the flow of contraband moving north and south.
In British Columbia, a once-quiet province in a country that has long enjoyed a low crime rate, the murder rate has soared in the past two years, Canadian officials say, because of killings linked to warring drug gangs.
Now law enforcement officials here fear the violence will migrate south. Mr. Winchell likened Seattle, with its currently low crime rate, to "Miami before the drug wars" because of what he said was an impending threat of drug-related violence. Vast amounts of drugs and money are now flowing through Seattle and other West Coast cities, he said, along the heavily traveled Interstate 5 corridor from California to the Canadian border. In many cases, law enforcement officials from both countries say, traffickers are smuggling cocaine north from California to Canada in exchange for B.C. bud.
Inspector Paul Nadeau of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who runs the Coordinated Marijuana Enforcement Team in British Columbia, estimated that in his province alone, 3.7 million pounds of B.C. bud is produced annually, in up to 20,000 marijuana-growing operations, with as much as 50 percent of it smuggled into the United States at points as far east as Michigan.
and so and so forth...
Violent New Front in Drug War Opens on the Canadian Border
By SARAH KERSHAW
Published: March 5, 2005
SEATTLE, March 2 - The drugs move across the Canadian border inside huge tractor-trailer rigs, pounds and pounds stashed in drums of frozen raspberries, tucked in shipments of crushed glass, wood chips and sawdust, or crammed into hollowed-out logs, in secret compartments that agents refer to as "coffins."
Advertisement
Kayakers paddle them south from British Columbia across the freezing bays of America's northwest corner, and well-paid couriers carry up to 100 pounds at a time in makeshift backpacks, hiking eight hours over the rugged mountainous terrain that forms part of the border between the United States and Canada. Small planes drop them onto raspberry fields and dairy farms in hockey bags equipped with avalanche beacons to alert traffickers that the drugs have landed.
The contraband is called B.C. bud, a highly potent form of marijuana named for the Canadian province where it is grown, and it has become the center of what law enforcement officials say is an increasingly violent $7 billion cultivation and smuggling industry.
On Thursday, four officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were shot to death in Alberta, British Columbia's neighboring province, as they were searching a marijuana-growing operation, one of many on the rise there. The killings stunned a country that has apparently not lost that many officers at once since the mid-19th century.
Leigh H. Winchell, special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle, which investigates border crimes and is part of the Department of Homeland Security, said the police killings in Alberta were stark evidence of "how serious the B.C. bud issue is getting, how much money is involved and the lengths to which these criminals are willing to go to protect it."
He added, "It's getting worse and worse, and we need to address it at every level. The funding needs to be there, and the resolve of law enforcement to address it needs to be there - on both sides of the border. It's a very dark day for all of us."
This new wave of drug trafficking, with Northwest Washington and Seattle a major transit point, comes as an enormous challenge to United States law enforcement agents stationed along the often invisible northern border. They are already dealing with the threat of terrorism, the flow of immigrants and new human smuggling operations - some run by some of the Canadian criminal organizations that move the marijuana south and cash, cocaine and guns north, American and Canadian law enforcement officials say.
The situation is also spotlighting sharp differences in the way the two countries deal with drug crimes, with some officials and experts on both sides of the border saying Canada's less stringent drug laws have made it harder to stem the flow of contraband moving north and south.
In British Columbia, a once-quiet province in a country that has long enjoyed a low crime rate, the murder rate has soared in the past two years, Canadian officials say, because of killings linked to warring drug gangs.
Now law enforcement officials here fear the violence will migrate south. Mr. Winchell likened Seattle, with its currently low crime rate, to "Miami before the drug wars" because of what he said was an impending threat of drug-related violence. Vast amounts of drugs and money are now flowing through Seattle and other West Coast cities, he said, along the heavily traveled Interstate 5 corridor from California to the Canadian border. In many cases, law enforcement officials from both countries say, traffickers are smuggling cocaine north from California to Canada in exchange for B.C. bud.
Inspector Paul Nadeau of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who runs the Coordinated Marijuana Enforcement Team in British Columbia, estimated that in his province alone, 3.7 million pounds of B.C. bud is produced annually, in up to 20,000 marijuana-growing operations, with as much as 50 percent of it smuggled into the United States at points as far east as Michigan.
and so and so forth...