Fantino, once outspoken against culture of 'dopeheads,' says he has 'become more aware' of the drug's medicinal benefits Two of Canada's former top cops - one of them recently a Conservative cabinet minister - are helping launch a new prescription-marijuana business. Julian Fantino and Raf Souccar are executives with a business that will open a storefront clinic in a strip mall north of Toronto in the coming weeks. Vaughan-based Aleafia Inc. is not a marijuana dispensary. It aims to be be among a new breed of corporate go-betweens, a "total health" provider that creates treatment plans for prospective medicinal-marijuana users and connects them with cannabis products from licensed growers. [continues 763 words]
Mexico's war on the drug cartels has become a national security issue for Canada, say Ottawa officials, as the violent backlash from the syndicates spills across the border into Canada and the U.S. Security agencies, including the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, are concerned an organized-crime problem could turn into a full-fledged national security threat. One official, who asked to speak anonymously, explained that "it's all part of this river of drugs - and we're one of the subsidiary streams. [continues 657 words]
Hundreds Of Airline Employees Suspected Of Smuggling Drugs And People, Report Says Canada's airport security has been compromised by hundreds of workers who have used their security clearances to smuggle drugs and people into the country, according to a new police report. Project Spawn, a two-year RCMP inquiry into hundreds of police investigations at Canada's eight largest airports, has identified nearly 60 active gangs infiltrating airports, concentrating on Toronto's Pearson International Airport, Montreal's Trudeau International Airport and Vancouver International Airport. [continues 748 words]
Canadian-based Asian crime syndicates have become the No. 1 distributors of ecstasy in the United States, according to a new report released yesterday. The business of Vietnamese and other Asian gangs, who started out by growing the popular form of marijuana known as B.C. Bud, has boomed, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The agency's national drug intelligence centre says the groups have diversified their product lines and set up U.S. franchises, grabbing a significant share of the multibillion-dollar U.S. drug market. [continues 496 words]
Adrenal Cancer Victim Prepared To Take Marijuana Substitute If He's Sent To Prison VANCOUVER -- Before his deportation to California yesterday, Steven Kubby gathered his wife and two daughters to his side. The 59-year-old medicinal-marijuana activist, who suffers from a rare form of cancer, wanted to relay the good news that a higher power had revealed to him. "He had a little conversation with God," said his wife, Michele Kubby. "And he asked Him, 'Can I survive this ordeal?' [continues 417 words]
VANCOUVER -- Wiretaps have been turned off. Investigations have been put under review. Police and Crown attorneys have been consulting. In British Columbia and across the country, officials are scrambling after a Vancouver judge ruled that a portion of the federal anti-gang law was unconstitutional. When Madam Justice Heather Holmes took a hard look at the four-year-old law that had come into question in a case before her, she basically stamped it, "Return to sender." In her Dec. 8 ruling, which was released last week, she said Parliament must clarify what the law means when it refers to a "criminal organization." She said the existing definition was too broad and too vague for the courts. [continues 592 words]
VANCOUVER -- A Hells Angels drug dealer presented a judge with a note from his mom yesterday as he asked for -- and received -- a lenient sentence. Norman Krogstad, who has pleaded guilty to dealing nearly half a million dollars worth of cocaine, gave the B.C. Supreme Court a letter from his 86-year-old mother during his sentencing hearing. She attested that despite his reputation as a Hells Angels ringleader, Mr. Krogstad was also a good son who visited her frequently. [continues 605 words]
Crooks 'Wash' Smaller Sums To Evade Law It's a term U.S. authorities use to describe how some criminals try to launder money. Now "smurfing" has entered the official lexicon of Canadian authorities, making an appearance in last week's report by FINTRAC, a federal government agency fighting financial crime. "Smurfing is trying to make financial transactions below the reportable threshold," explains Peter Lamey, a spokesman for the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada. By law, banks and other financial agencies must flag certain deposits that exceed $10,000 and notify the government, which wants to keep an eye out for crooks seeking to wash large sums of dirty money. [continues 373 words]
Gardening Suppliers Face Increased Scrutiny As Police Try To Curb Urban Pot Production The 1,000 watts needed to power the Sunmaster metal-halide grow-light kit make it blindingly bright. So bright that when one focuses on Dominic Cramer after staring at the $450 device, little multihued spots dance in front of the shop owner as he explains how his other products work, including the Can-Fan charcoal filters that suck suspicious aromas out of a room. But the soft whir of ventilation fans in his second-floor Yonge Street shop don't muffle the fulminations of the founder of the Toronto Hemp Company. The 31-year-old entrepreneur can go on at length about his wares, but frequently pauses to rant against "ignorant politicians," "police propaganda," "witch hunts," "Big Brother" and the general "lunacy" of this country's marijuana laws. [continues 826 words]
Freedom From Nosy Neighbours A Plus Toronto And Whitecourt, Alta. -- By all accounts, Canada is in the midst of a marijuana grow-op boom. In just about every urban community, police are pulling pot out of dirt-filled basements underneath ordinary houses. But the real action often lies hidden in the suburbs and the boonies. Large farmhouses have concealed huge growing operations. Rows of boxcars have been buried in fields to create makeshift subterranean bunkers filled with marijuana. For criminals, the wide-open spaces of rural areas can be alluring. Nosy neighbours are few and far between. Easier access to transportation routes are enticing. And police forces tend to be small outfits, with fewer resources and dedicated drug squads. [continues 456 words]
Markham is home to what police are calling the largest ecstasy bust ever in Canada -- a drug seizure thought to be worth perhaps half a billion dollars. York Regional Police put the figure to the bust, made last week, for the first time yesterday. Police raided a house on Glenbourne Park Drive in the northern suburb, and searched other properties in Toronto. In the end, seven men from British Columbia were arrested. "These people are not welcome in Markham," Markham Mayor Don Cousens said in an interview yesterday. He added that the town is cracking down on illicit drug-making. "Our community is working with the police force to fight it." [continues 250 words]
A veteran Toronto police officer has been charged with assault, just three months after being charged with possession of cocaine. The embattled force, already plagued with allegations of corruption, said in a release yesterday that it will move to fire Constable John Pepper. The 29-year-old officer was taken into custody at an Etobicoke residence early yesterday after police were called to help. Police colleagues charged Constable Pepper with assaulting an 18-year-old. Further details were not divulged. The earlier drug charge against the constable was laid on Feb. 20. [continues 392 words]
Law Enforcement Overwhelmed, Report Warns Ontario's homegrown marijuana industry is an expanding multibillion-dollar export business, one that is making gangsters rich as it threatens neighbourhoods, taxpayers and children, police said yesterday. The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police released a report on the province's marijuana business. In Green Tide: Indoor Marihuana Cultivation, police offer their best estimates on a crime that they say is overwhelming law enforcement. According to the report: The number of grow operations in the province has more than doubled in the past two years to as many as 15,000, mostly in homes in suburbs or small and medium-sized cities. [continues 385 words]
As The Taboos Around Pot Smoking Disappear, Some Seniors Have Started Indulging In A Puff Or Two To Help Ease The Pain Of Aging, Writes Colin Freeze With a titanium knee and a sore spine, 74-year-old Clara Welling is all too familiar with battling an aging body's aches and pains. So, inside a cookie tin, she keeps a secret weapon tucked away. Sealed in a Ziploc-bag lies the septuagenarian's small stash of marijuana. Speaking and smoking pot on the balcony of her 19th-floor Toronto apartment, the free-spirited senior said she enjoys marijuana -- and that more of her contemporaries ought to try it. [continues 1205 words]
Chiefs Tell Officers Not To Charge Anyone Found In Possession Of Less Than 30 Grams The marijuana-possession law is such a befuddling mess that Ontario police chiefs threw up their hands yesterday and told their officers to cease charging anyone with the country's most common drug offence. In statements that at times read as if they were dictated through gritted teeth, the province's police chiefs called upon the federal government to get its act together and quickly clarify whether possessing less than 30 grams of marijuana remains a Criminal Code offence. [continues 455 words]
Down a quiet cul-de-sac in suburban Quebec, police discovered large-scale marijuana cultivation in 13 neighbourhood houses. In Manitoba, an underground pot farm complex was concealed beneath a grove of trees, reports COLIN FREEZE. They're in every Canadian city and town, some run by gangs and some by industrious young cannabis devotees. Ottawa's vaunted new marijuana law won't stop them. Has the house next door gone to pot? The rows of metre-high plants burst with flowers. Touch the buds and a sticky, smelly resin attaches to your fingers. The connoisseurs can identify the vintage simply by bringing their hands to their noses: California Orange? Mighty Mite? Dutch Treat? [continues 2926 words]
Landmark Ontario Decision Goes Beyond The Decriminalization Proposed By Ottawa TORONTO and OTTAWA -- Canada has no laws prohibiting marijuana possession, an Ontario Superior Court judge said yesterday in a ruling that will be binding on judges in the province and may soon be picked up across the country. "For today, and for the Victoria Day weekend, it's a very pleasant state of affairs for recreational pot smokers," said criminal lawyer Paul Burstein, who helped argue the case successfully. It was the second time that a Windsor teenager who was caught smoking pot while playing hooky in a park has been found not to have broken any law because, the courts ruled, there are effectively no longer any marijuana laws to break. [continues 546 words]
Mafia drug lord Alfonso Caruana has been paroled from his 18-year drug-trafficking sentence -- just three years after a judge jailed him. Despite being a kingpin of an elaborate multimillion-dollar global business involving quantities of cocaine that law-enforcement officials term astounding, Mr. Caruana is considered by Canadian authorities to be no different than any other first-time, non-violent offender. As such, he has automatically been given the benefit of the doubt by Canadian officials -- though new charges from his native Italy are keeping him in jail and out of a halfway house for the time being. [continues 334 words]
Joint Probe Disrupts Cross-Border Trade Of Cold Medication Used To Make Speed TORONTO and WASHINGTON -- Eleven people from Quebec and Ontario are among 65 charged after an 18-month cross-border inquiry into the distribution of a cold medication used to manufacture speed. The investigation, known as Operation Northern Star, is the latest effort to crack down on the pseudoephedrine trade, and its results were announced yesterday by the RCMP in Montreal and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington. [continues 338 words]
Convicted drug lord Alfonso Caruana was arrested on new drug-trafficking charges from Italy yesterday, just as he is becoming eligible to be paroled from the 18-year Canadian jail sentence he was handed three years ago. Convicted in 2000 of being part of a conspiracy to ship tonnes of cocaine for the Italian Mafia, Mr. Caruana is, like all first-time, non-violent offenders, eligible for what is called accelerated parole after one-sixth of his sentence has been served. [continues 474 words]
