Pubdate: Wed,  1 Aug 2001
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2001 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Linda Diebel

CANADIAN GRASS CAUSES BIG BUZZ IN MEXICO

Newspaper smokes out story on potency of homegrown pot

- - Oh, Canada. Land of lakes and loons, maples and moose . . . and marijuana.

Of course the world's best pot comes from Mexico, eh?

Wrong.

Blame Canada.

With great glee on the weekend, Mexico's largest newspaper splashed across 
its front page a special investigative report on Canada's booming business 
in what Mexicans call la mota. And, well, it's going to be hard to be 
sanctimonious about drugs in Mexico after this.

That northern homegrown outranks Mexican grass in potency, experts told La 
Reforma.

Holy smoke, Canada even exports seed . . . to Mexico!

Free-wheeling Vancouver is the "Amsterdam of the Americas,'' according to 
Reforma. British Columbia and Ontario are awash in marijuana. And the 
world's largest undefended border between Canada and the United States is a 
joke - a mere bump in the road on the way to big-time drug profits for 
Canadians.

These days, marijuana fortunes are being made and consolidated "just like 
during the prohibition years in the United States of the 1920s when 
(Canadians got rich) smuggling contraband whiskey and rum into the 
States,'' writes Reforma's Canadian correspondent Maximo Kuri.

He does stop short of referring to "Canadian drug lords.''

But, he notes, high-quality Canadian seeds are now being shipped to Tijuana 
and Ciudad Juarez, two down-and-dirty Mexican towns on the U.S. border and 
home to big drug cartels. The guys who work for these organizations leave 
their enemies in little pieces in the desert.

Kuri, based in Vancouver, interviewed city police there, RCMP officers, 
federal justice officials and Marc Emery, founder of the Marijuana Party of 
Canada, as well as compiling statistics. His report for the Reforma group, 
with newspapers in Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara, smashes the 
stereotype of a clean Canada tut-tutting Mexico for its dirty drug trade.

It portrays a Canada where marijuana growing is out of control; where 
judges are lenient on growers; where Ontario is an important producer for 
the northeastern U.S. and where marijuana is British Columbia's top export 
to the U.S., dwarfing everything else from pulp and paper to oil and gas.

Reforma pegs the annual B.C.-U.S. marijuana trade at $3.8 billion (U.S.), 
compared to $2.8 billion for wood products, $1.58 billion for oil and gas, 
and $1.25 billion for electrical energy.

It estimates the marijuana business employs 150,000 people in the Vancouver 
area alone, and quotes city police as saying the drug grown there is 10 
times more potent than it was 20 years ago.

"You don't get many people growing tomatoes in this city,'' Reforma quotes 
an RCMP sergeant. "Canadian dope is better than Mexican,'' says one 
headline on Kuri's stories.

"Canadian marijuana is the highest quality in the world,'' Vancouver police 
officer Scott Driemel reportedly says, adding it is because of the high 
content of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the active euphoria-producing 
substance in pot.

Marijuana booster Emery, who makes a killing selling Canadian seeds on the 
Internet and edits Cannabis Culture, says Mexican quality is actually 
better, but poor shipping reduces its punch.

"It's a shame because (Mexican grass) could go for 10 times more, but by 
the time it arrives in the United States, it's spent a whole year packed in 
blocks, very heavy, and finally sells cheap,'' he says. Mexican marijuana 
sells in U.S. cities for $2,000 a kilo, while a Canadian kilo can fetch 
$16,000 in New York, Emery adds.

He ships 450 types of seeds worldwide, including sativa, native to Mexico, 
which offers a "buzz that is cerebral, euphoric and vigorous.''

"Dope is one of Canada's major agricultural products,'' Emery told the 
newspaper.

It must be noted that an unnamed federal official does stand up for 
Canadian justice telling Reforma "marijuana is as illegal as any other 
prohibited drug or substance and Canadian law punishes the growing and 
trafficking of marijuana.''

Meanwhile, Emery, who was arrested 10 times, is still out there running a 
mail-order business with sales of $9 million over seven years, and growing 
fast.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens