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B.C. Bud
`(Article taken from TIMES� magazine)` The world's best pot is six times as potent as marijuana from Mexico, and it's being smuggled big time out of western Canada. Marc Emery expects to earn about $1 million this year selling seed for high-octane marijuana and books on how to grow it.Most of his customers live not far from his mail-order business, which is illegal but largely ignored by the authorities in Vancouver. It's not a place widely regarded by the outside world as a hotbed of pot cultivation, but that's changing fast, and Emery, 42, steps to his office window to demonstrate why. He holds up a fat sprig of marijuana buds and points out the crystals of dried resin that sparkle like tiny diamonds in the flat winter sunlight. These crystals make the local pot, which has been perfected through indoor growing under virtual laboratory conditions, twice as potent as competing varieties from Northern California and Oregon and six times as strong as the most common Colombian and Mexican product. "This," Emery says, smiling at the minty-smelling weed, "is the top of the market." Across town Dave Williams, an investigator for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, agrees--but he's not smiling. "British Columbia," he says ruefully, "now produces the best marijuana in the world." . Known as "B.C. Bud," this pot is finding a lucrative market among U.S. users of recreational drugs. A kg of dried B.C. Bud--whose active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, accounts for about 30% of its weight--sells for about $18,000 in New York City. The more common marijuana from Mexico, with a THC content of about 5%, sells for as little as $650 per kg. At these prices, B.C. pot-growing operations are blossoming like the cannabis plant itself. The Mounties estimate that some 8,000 illegal growing operations located mostly in B.C. produce 800 tons of weed annually and generate $1 billion in revenue. Emery, a former antiquarian bookseller and libertarian activist who underwrites marijuana-legalization campaigns around the world, claims those numbers are on the very low side. He says there are 70,000 growers generating more than $6 billion a year in the province. Many of the B.C. growers tend a few plants in a basement or attic under bare 1,000-watt metal halide or high-pressure sodium light bulbs. Some of them almost qualify as specialized horticulturalists, like Dr. Ziggy, the alias of a former computer engineer who is renowned for using cutting-edge cloning and cultivation techniques to breed some of B.C.'s strongest pot varieties. Ziggy spends long hours in his immaculate attic garden, rooting shoots from the most vigorous female plants, called "mothers," then surrounding them with fans and air cleaners, while he hand-feeds the young plants organic tea. Some females produce seed; others are kept in a ladies-only room where they bulk up with resin meant to attract pollen from male plants--which never arrive. Ziggy gently manicures his engorged specimens, then harvests the delicate buds with scissors. "It's like bonsai," he says. The authorities give lower priority to busting cultivators, who, even if they're caught with hundreds of marijuana plants, usually get off without jail time. They face fines and seizures of their equipment but are typically back in business within weeks. Canada doesn't have U.S.-style mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses. And, law-enforcement officials say, most judges here don't view pot cultivation as a serious crime. Says Corporal John Dykstra of the Mounties: "People in the marijuana-growing business want to do business on our side of the border, because the risk is so low." The Mounties have focused instead on crippling the organized-crime groups that have broken into the business. Latin-American and Asian gangs, as well as outlaw bikers, are moving into B.C. pot cultivation--and also into lucrative cross-border smuggling and distribution. The Mounties have been busting more and more large-scale operations, often located in warehouse-size buildings, with strings of light bulbs as bright as stadium lights and computer-controlled hydroponic systems for fertilizing and watering several hundred plants. The smugglers move the stuff on every conceivable conveyance: over back roads in four-wheel-drive vehicles; through the woods on snowmobiles and dog sleds; and over water by boat, sea kayak or jet ski. Seizures of B.C. Bud by U.S. law-enforcement agencies have doubled and redoubled over the past 2 1/2 years. The crackdown has made a dent, but grower Emery notes that it is merely pushing U.S. prices higher. "They're killing us," says Mike Flego, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's office in Blaine, Wash. Seattle Customs enforcement chief Rodney Tureaud Jr. agrees, "We could double our numbers at the border and still be understaffed."

B.C. Bud

(Article taken from TIMES� magazine)

The world's best pot is six times as potent as marijuana from Mexico, and it's being smuggled big time out of western Canada. Marc Emery expects to earn about $1 million this year selling seed for high-octane marijuana and books on how to grow it.Most of his customers live not far from his mail-order business, which is illegal but largely ignored by the authorities in Vancouver. It's not a place widely regarded by the outside world as a hotbed of pot cultivation, but that's changing fast, and Emery, 42, steps to his office window to demonstrate why. He holds up a fat sprig of marijuana buds and points out the crystals of dried resin that sparkle like tiny diamonds in the flat winter sunlight. These crystals make the local pot, which has been perfected through indoor growing under virtual laboratory conditions, twice as potent as competing varieties from Northern California and Oregon and six times as strong as the most common Colombian and Mexican product. "This," Emery says, smiling at the minty-smelling weed, "is the top of the market." Across town Dave Williams, an investigator for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, agrees--but he's not smiling. "British Columbia," he says ruefully, "now produces the best marijuana in the world."
.
Known as "B.C. Bud," this pot is finding a lucrative market among U.S. users of recreational drugs. A kg of dried B.C. Bud--whose active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, accounts for about 30% of its weight--sells for about $18,000 in New York City. The more common marijuana from Mexico, with a THC content of about 5%, sells for as little as $650 per kg. At these prices, B.C. pot-growing operations are blossoming like the cannabis plant itself. The Mounties estimate that some 8,000 illegal growing operations located mostly in B.C. produce 800 tons of weed annually and generate $1 billion in revenue. Emery, a former antiquarian bookseller and libertarian activist who underwrites marijuana-legalization campaigns around the world, claims those numbers are on the very low side. He says there are 70,000 growers generating more than $6 billion a year in the province. Many of the B.C. growers tend a few plants in a basement or attic under bare 1,000-watt metal halide or high-pressure sodium light bulbs. Some of them almost qualify as specialized horticulturalists, like Dr. Ziggy, the alias of a former computer engineer who is renowned for using cutting-edge cloning and cultivation techniques to breed some of B.C.'s strongest pot varieties. Ziggy spends long hours in his immaculate attic garden, rooting shoots from the most vigorous female plants, called "mothers," then surrounding them with fans and air cleaners, while he hand-feeds the young plants organic tea. Some females produce seed; others are kept in a ladies-only room where they bulk up with resin meant to attract pollen from male plants--which never arrive. Ziggy gently manicures his engorged specimens, then harvests the delicate buds with scissors. "It's like bonsai," he says. The authorities give lower priority to busting cultivators, who, even if they're caught with hundreds of marijuana plants, usually get off without jail time. They face fines and seizures of their equipment but are typically back in business within weeks. Canada doesn't have U.S.-style mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses. And, law-enforcement officials say, most judges here don't view pot cultivation as a serious crime. Says Corporal John Dykstra of the Mounties: "People in the marijuana-growing business want to do business on our side of the border, because the risk is so low." The Mounties have focused instead on crippling the organized-crime groups that have broken into the business. Latin-American and Asian gangs, as well as outlaw bikers, are moving into B.C. pot cultivation--and also into lucrative cross-border smuggling and distribution. The Mounties have been busting more and more large-scale operations, often located in warehouse-size buildings, with strings of light bulbs as bright as stadium lights and computer-controlled hydroponic systems for fertilizing and watering several hundred plants. The smugglers move the stuff on every conceivable conveyance: over back roads in four-wheel-drive vehicles; through the woods on snowmobiles and dog sleds; and over water by boat, sea kayak or jet ski. Seizures of B.C. Bud by U.S. law-enforcement agencies have doubled and redoubled over the past 2 1/2 years. The crackdown has made a dent, but grower Emery notes that it is merely pushing U.S. prices higher. "They're killing us," says Mike Flego, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's office in Blaine, Wash. Seattle Customs enforcement chief Rodney Tureaud Jr. agrees, "We could double our numbers at the border and still be understaffed."

So thats why all the asians are coming here!

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