Pubdate: Thu, 21 May 2009 Source: Chronicle Herald (CN NS) Copyright: 2009 The Halifax Herald Limited Contact: http://thechronicleherald.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/180 Authors: Brian Medel and Dan Arsenault Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy) STUDENTS TIP OFF COPS TO DRUGS Ecstacy Shaped Like Cartoon Characters Sold Near Yarmouth County School, Police Say YARMOUTH - More than 300 tiny pills resembling cartoon characters were seized in a Yarmouth County drug bust earlier this month. More than 50 grams of cocaine was also taken by RCMP during a raid conducted just over a kilometre from Drumlin Heights Consolidated School. On Wednesday police arrested Wendy Lynn Porter, 38, and charged her with trafficking in ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana. She was arrested at a Glenwood home where she lives as a tenant, said Cpl. Duane Lopie of the RCMP's Yarmouth-Clare street crime enforcement unit. She's also charged with growing marijuana. Some of the tiny pills, believed by police to be ecstasy, were moulded in green to resemble the masked faces of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Others were in white and shaped like the heads of a Transformer robot. The pills vaguely resembled multivitamins given to children. Mounties acted quickly after some students at the school told Const. Mario Ross, the RCMP's school safety resource officer for Yarmouth County, about the drugs, Const. Ross said Wednesday. "Any type of drug activity near a school is a priority," Cpl. Lopie said. When officers arrived at the home with a search warrant last week they found marijuana growing on the premises as well as drugs ready for sale. They also seized a large quantity of cash, some scales and other items, Cpl Lopie said. Ms. Porter was released from custody soon after her arrest with instructions to appear in Yarmouth provincial court in August. Drumlin Heights Consolidated School has about 434 students in Grades Primary through 12, says the Tri-County regional school board website. The school's principal, Dwayne Landry, chose not to discuss the drug problem Wednesday, referring questions to school board administration. An RCMP drug expert said Wednesday that ecstasy is now the most popular drug among high school students in Nova Scotia. "There's not a high school in Nova Scotia or Atlantic Canada, for that matter, that you can't buy ecstasy at," Cpl. Gord Vail, of the RCMP's synthetic drug unit, said. About 10 years ago, he said, ecstasy came in plain, white tablets that sold for $25 to $40, but today they sell for about $10 each and come in bright colours with stamped images of cartoon characters, NFL logos and other things to entice their target market of 15- to 30-year-olds. Cpl. Vail compares the style change to breakfast cereals. Young kids always go for the brightly coloured products with funny shapes or pictures of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Power Rangers. "This stuff is predominantly trafficked to young people, particularly in our schools, and I just don't think that's going to change," he said. Although the pills are all sold as ecstasy, many times they contain other substances. In 2007, Cpl. Vail sent 223 tablets, taken in a number of seizures across Atlantic Canada, to a lab for testing. Only a quarter of them were made of pure ecstasy, which goes by the chemical name methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA. More than half the tablets had no ecstasy, but had the more addictive methamphetamine as the main active ingredient. "The vast majority of traffickers in the Atlantic region do not know what they are selling, so obviously our kids don't know what they're getting," Cpl. Vail said. The producers use methamphetamine because it's cheaper, he said. Cpl. Vail said all of Canada's ecstasy is made by organized crime groups in Quebec, Ontario or British Columbia and those provinces produce 80 per cent of the ecstasy used in the United States. It costs about 25 cents to make one pill, he said. The organized crime groups are mostly Asian, he said, adding that one of the drug's vital ingredients (piperonyl methyl ketone, or PMK) can be bought in China or India, but few other places. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom