rent apartment jamaica

ryan archibald: myname's ryan. we're in british columbia. and i'm in a roomfull of weed. in the wake of legalization ofmarijuana in washington and colorado, we've come to canada'spot capital to get a glimpse of the currentstate of the industry in this country. mik mann: for how many yearshave people said, what's wrong with politicians?

are they stupid? no. it's about money. and there's a businessof prohibition. david: when all the evidence issuggesting that it's like, if you want people to stopusing drugs, making it illegal, it seems to be not aparticularly effective tool. so why do we keep using it? jesse: medicine isproduct, right?

these are products. i'm not in it because of weed. i'm in because it's fun. it's cool. and you're trying to createa good product. and there's going to becompetition for that product. murray power: any waythat you can make money, you make money. that's what organizedcrime wants to do.

money gives you powerand control. dana larsen: the war on cannabisand, really, the broader war on drugs, i thinkit's one of the most important social issues of our time. jodie emery: nobody wantsdrug war anymore. nobody wants marijuanaprohibition anymore. can't we just stopthe punishment and take a new approach? [music playing]

ryan archibald: if you like toget high, there's a good chance you've heard of bc bud. back in the '70s, draft dodgersbrought their seeds to british columbia, which happenedto have a perfect climate for cultivation. the development of strongerstrains higher in thc, an unprotected border with theus, and lax canadian laws enabled the industry to generaterevenues today estimated at close to $7 billiona year in british

columbia alone. this is a province with apopulation of only 4.5 million accounting for over 40% ofcanada's marijuana industry. everything is set to changesince prime minister stephen harper instated bill c-10,the new tough on crime legislation. now the government is armedwith mandatory minimum sentences and super-prisons tofill, helping to ramp up canada's war on drugs.

at a time when bc is underattack from law enforcement, the recent legalizations inwashington and colorado are putting further economicstrain on its marijuana industry. so the times, they certainlyare a-changing. we wanted to take a look at thecurrent condition, meet some of the key charactersinvolved, and try and get a sense of what thefuture holds. we're now in port alberni.

we're going to talkto mik mann. he's a grower and activist. he's been in the industryquite a long time. he's a bit of a character. so we're going to go hang outwith him, check out his gardens, and see whathe has to say. mik mann: i like to look atpeople and say, yeah, i know it's hard to tell bylooking at me, but i do grow marijuana.

i've got my cultivate freedom,the free mark, chemistry symbol for thc, some rastastripes, pot tv logo. that's opus from "bloom county."and he's got a joint. his watering can is empty. he's just done his chores. bob marley, frank zappa, my logofor opus farms, 420, and a big roach here thati can smoke. my name is mik mann. i run opus farms, which isbasically this house in my

garden and what you seehere in the office. we have cannabinoid receptorsin our body. they're there for something. i think it might befor cannabinoids. speaking of, let'shave some now. the pot that gets to thechronoisseurs, as we prefer to be called, is usually grown insmaller amounts by people in basements or outbuildings orwhatever the situation. but it's not aboutmaking money.

it's about the marijuana. i think i got 15 plantsin here right now. smell your fingers. ryan archibald: smells good. mik mann: the good stuff. ryan archibald: smellslike weed. mik mann: this is 12 yearsi've had my permit. so i have seven grams, upto seven grams a day. so i can grow 35 plants.

at 35 plants, and as aprofessional grower, i mean, really, i can grow alot of marijuana. there is no shortage ofgadgets and gizmos and everything out there. and i've used myshare of them. but i've gone right back alwaysto the keep it simple, stupid method. just the kiss. it's the cheapest.

i spend the leastamount of money. i put money into goodfertilizers. you grow the best pot out there,everything else takes care of itself. people want the best pot. they'll say, well,we'll take that. sure, it's going to cost more. or you can go down the streetbuy your pot wherever. just nah.

so that's your choices. like anything, those are theeconomics of any type of-- oh god, i can't thinkof the word. commodity. that's a major concern of mine,that legalization would lead to just screening orpushing guys like me out, the mom and pops, the individuals. however, legalizationis the first step. and from there, now we canchange regulations.

and we can fight for theright to grow your own. we can make our own beer. we can make our own wine. and i don't see any reason whywe can't grow a few plants. you're growing yourown medicine. you're saving tax dollars. i think we should begetting a medal. or they should be paying us. ryan archibald: whileindividuals like mik mann

produce their own medicinalweed, there's another group of growers that make money growingmedicinal marijuana for licensed patients who can'tgrow for themselves. we met up with david, one ofthese designated growers, and he gave us the inside scoop onthe medicinal marijuana system as we drove up to visitone of his grow ops. david: hey, listen, i'mjust rolling up to squamish right now. i'll be back a little bitlater this evening.

can i just give youa holler then? ok, sounds good, buddy. all right, later. so the the problem with dealingwith marijuana is that every asshole wants you to goget their brother in fucking comox a quarter or somethinglike that, or an eighth. and i'm like, that's notreally what i do. i don't really know evenwhat an eighth costs. ryan archibald: leaveme alone.

david: like, if you owned acoca-cola bottling factory, would you ask them for a coke? could you grab me a coke? like, go fucking buy a coke. i don't know. fucking, that's notmy business. if i owned a mac's, i'dget you a coke. like, fuck off. has anyone explained to youhow the medical system

situation works asof right now? ryan archibald: no, not really. david: ok. if a doctor prescribes a certainamount, so like 10 grams a day or something likethat, how do you regulate that amount of production? they decided that they wouldtranslate that prescription amount, that per-gram amount,into a plant count. so 10 grams a day equals50 plants.

on 50 plants, you can usuallygrow a bunch of little ones. and you could producethat 10 grams a day. or you could grow a bunch ofreally big ones and produce 50 pounds, if you want. you could grow six-foot treesand produce a ton of it. so what essentially has happenedis you've created a system in which the unfetteredproduction of marijuana has become de facto legalized. but the distribution and saleaspect is still criminal.

i have heard that a lot of thetime now, patients often can't afford to pay for theirprescription amounts. so they're really being used asfoils in some ways, right, for the rest of the operation. but that's as i understand it. ryan archibald: it's hearsay. david: that's hearsay. ryan archibald: so basically,according to david, some growers have been using theirlicense as a front to grow

marijuana that gets soldinto the black market. along the way, we picked updavid's partner, jesse, and went to see his high-techbasement grow. jesse: this is called arecirculating deep water culture system. under current is the actualbrand name for it. this method allows plants togrow probably twice as fast as soil growing, i'd say. they started out one-leafretards.

david: why would it bedoing that right now? jesse: because they're growingtwo and a half inches a day. david: is it just-- but with not-- jesse: they just caught ityesterday and started going, waaaah-- exploding. david: they're just doing toomuch for their own good. jesse: exactly. steroid plants.

david: ksssh, come on,little bitches. jesse: let's just say i own myown house, don't have to fucking pay a mortgage. and i just have theone room in back. and let's say we had four peoplewe're producing four. we might sell, what,$3,000 worth of product out of the house? $4,000 worth of product? it costs almost $2,000 inelectricity a month to run

that operation down there,nutrients and so on. that's assuming mylabor's for free. so we've got two designatedgrowers splitting $2,000 in profit, $1,000 each. that doesn't even pay the rentof the fucking house. if they had just allowed peopleto sell to 50 patients or 100 patients, that could be economically viable down there. ryan archibald: the governmenthas recently announced changes

that will eliminate individualgrow operations, such as the one in mik mann's basement andthe steroid plant system we just saw in favor ofcommercialized with way pricier weed. jesse: so i'll show youguys the bedroom. ryan archibald: david and jesseare ahead of the game, and will be amongst the firstin line to apply for a commercial grow license. they want to show us anotherlarger grow op with a set up

they plan on expanding oncethe license is granted. jesse: it is hard to finddoctors who are compassionate that want to work withpeople and issue prescriptions to patients. every doctor i know hasno issues with pot. they just don't know how to goabout doing it, you know, the 33-page form that they need tofill out while the college is telling them that they're notsupposed to be doing this, and that they could be liable.

who wants to prescribe that? ryan archibald: so you'reessentially planning for the future of legalizationright now. you're starting. jesse: well, not so much thefuture of legalization, just the future of access forpatients that's realistic. i'm ok with a medicalframework. we just need to make it in a waythat a patient can go to a doctor, get a prescription,and then go get that

prescription filled that dayin the same way that every single other drug in canadais regulated. mothership? ryan archibald: ah, yes. let's see the real deal. jesse: that's morethe real deal. ryan archibald: thisis the real deal. there's the flowers. jesse: looks fuckinggreat, doesn't it?

ryan archibald: yeah. jesse: i know. it's one of the best roomsi've ever seen. ryan archibald: it'ssuch a happy place. jesse: it is a happy place. and the plants reflectyour attitude. we have really unhappy plants. and all the girls come by totrim, all the plants start getting happier.

i mean, you can visibly watchtheir leaves lift up. it's weird. ryan archibald: so whatkind of weed is this? jesse: we call it mama. it used to be an oldbiker strain. all these strains were developedillegally in grow rooms before there wasmedical programs. so people bred plantsthat produced a lot and were heavy hitters.

that was what themarket wanted. the market has now shifted. ryan archibald: peoplehave more choice. the more it's allowed, themore legal it becomes, is better for all the consumers. jesse: oh, absolutely. and it's also better forproducers as well. because it's not just aboutproducing yields. like, i enjoy doing this.

if we're just growing onemassive monoculture, that's not interesting from thegrowing side of things. it's kind of boring. it's only interesting if you'rea gangster and just want to make money. which i'm not. like, i'm a good grower. but i'm not an amazing grower. i'm a good grower.

i mean, this looks, oh,wow, this is awesome. but this is not hard to-- it'snot easy to replicate. but it's not impossible. with enough capital and someexpertise and the right strains, it's, you know. there'll be a whole bunchof us with that. so i'll be competing with guyswho will also have nice product and will be smart andgo get into the business. and we'll have to fight itout a little bit, great.

sounds wonderful, bring it on. and the mom and pop guys,they're gonna have problems. the days of making tens ofthousands of dollars out of your basement with your crappylittle grow where there's pesticides and shit everywhere, those days are over. you've got to have a productthat people are like, that is clean, that is nice, that iswhat i want to consume. ryan archibald: byebye, ma and pa.

jesse: adios, hippies. i love hippies, don'tget me wrong. hippies are great. i'm kidding about thehippie thing. by hippie, i'm just making thereference, like somebody who's treating it like it's somekind of god's gift. and it is an amazing plantthat does great things. but it's just a plant withmedicinal benefits and recreational benefits.

let's just treat it like that. yeah, dude. ryan archibald: yeah,this is-- jesse: look at thesethis pathway. isn't this ridiculous? ryan archibald: makes mefeel like a groundhog. jesse: yeah, yeah,there you go. yeah. ryan archibald: am i goingto reek like weed when

i get out of here? jesse: your body odor's so badthat i don't think you need to worry about it. ryan archibald: ok. jesse: i'm just kidding. ryan archibald: i'lljust smell like this for a few days? david: oh, yeah, no,you are going to absolutely stink, yeah.

you're going to walkout and have a very strong odor of marijuana. ryan archibald: now that ireeked of weed, our next stop was to go talk to the rcmp. escort required. these are the guys we'regoing to talk to today. murray power: my name'smurray power. and i'm an inspector with theroyal canadian mounted police. and i've been with themounted police for

24 years this january. i am presently what we call theoperations officer for our greater vancouverdrug section. my criminals liketheir high end. ryan archibald: how often dolegal grow ops end up, i guess, turning bad, and you findthat they're distributing outside of their allowance orwhat they're allowed to do? murray power: no doubt there'sthose out there that have exploited the spirit of themedical marijuana industry.

and they are organizing forillegal purposes, whether it's growing over the limit or insome ways obtaining a license through false pretense. these things do happen. they're difficult to prove. and it just makes our jobmore challenging. i appreciate them thatdo stay within the limit of their license. i think the licenses arevery generous, from

the ones i've seen. so i don't think anybody who'sdoing based upon what they're given has anything to complainabout with regards to the quantity or the volume thatthey're allowed to grow. ryan archibald: we were speakingto some last night. their concern, or the problemthey have with it, is they can't actually make it aprofitable business for the allotment of plants that areallowed per patient. murray power: they can't makea profitable business?

is that what they said? murray power: i don'tknow if that was the spirit or the intent. ryan archibald: well, no one'sgoing to do it for free. they can't do it for free. somebody needs to put the timeand effort in to grow it for medicinal purposes, iguess was the point. murray power: yeah, yeah. yeah, i just won't go down thatroad, because i'm just

not sure if a profit was partof health canada's plan. ryan archibald: well, drugstoresmake profit. murray power: yeah. ryan archibald: anyway. as we've been sitting here, i'vebeen smelling the stench of marijuana come off me. so i apologize for bringingthat into your lawful environment. murray power: i thought youwere going to say it's

coming off of me. i'm thinking, hey. that's ok. i'm used to the smellof marijuana. ryan archibald: yeah,i'm sure you are. murray power: i can smellit from miles away. and it's just not goodstuff, you know? ryan archibald: despite thefact that there's an established medicinal marijuanasystem in canada,

"not good stuff" seemsto be the predominant view held by the rcmp. inferring the same for thegovernment's beliefs, which poses one of the key challenges pro-legalization faces. well, it's another rainy day invancouver, aka vansterdam, the center of marijuanaactivism in canada. so we want to spend a few dayshere and talk to some of the people on the front lines forthe battle of legalization.

activists like david malmolevine are credited for the lax law enforcement thatforms the basis of weed culture in vancouver. he's devoted his life to thecause of ending prohibition and keeping the secret historyof herbal medicine alive through his peculiarherbal museum. david malmo levine: right now,white people think medicine is whatever a doctor handsyou, and anything else is just a drug.

but i like the native northamerican indian definition of medicine. they say medicine are thingsthat are good. it's a very broad definitionof medicine. that's king esarhaddon movingaway from this cannabis into his ancient hotbox device. he'd put his head in there. and fumes would rise from theincense altar, and he'd get really high, talk to his gods.

ryan archibald: the tour of thismuseum started out with a lot of interesting historicalfacts, but everything ultimately spun intoconspiracies, which i had a little trouble following. david malmo levine: witches andgnostics and hippies, they all mean the same thing. a gnostic is someone who'sknowledgeable. a witch is someone who's wise. and a hippie is someonewho's high.

so they're all clued in tocertain rituals activities and secrets of herbal medicine. italians in the cia-- thefour-armed god shiva-- george herbert walker bush-- john the baptist-- fidel castro-- the assassinationof president kennedy-- that's whyjesus got nailed. oh, and the best aphrodisiacof all, marijuana. makes a minute feellike an hour.

how handy is that, eh? why i went to jail was fordealing herbs out of the place called the herb school. and it wasn't just cannabis. it was opium, a little bit ofopium, some magic mushrooms, some botanical dmt extracts,a lot of hashish. it should be everybody's rightto grow them, to sell them, and to use them because theycome from mother nature, and they have a greater safety andefficacy record than all the

pills do and all theconcentrates of hard drugs. when people realize that,they're like, oh, i can see why they'd want it to be illegalbecause i can supply myself with my own painkillersin my backyard and pay no money ever. my nickname in jail was therabbi because i had this long beard to try to keep guysaway from me, kinda. the guy in the cellnext to me, his nickname was baby girl.

so i think i got away witha pretty good nickname. it was a university for crime. go in with a bachelor of pot,and you come out with a master's in extortion. it really is kind of like agladiator school, where they teach you how to be brutal,to either be a victim or a victimizer. hempbc, which was what the bcmarijuana party and cannabis culture headquarters used to be,that got raided many times

in the 1990s. it was almost like every otherweek we were being raided. and we just got used tonon-violent arrest resistance and shaming the police. we would ask them where theevidence of harm is, what aside from dry mouthand red eyes were they concerned about. where are the marijuanacancer wards? where are the marijuanadrunk tanks?

where is the marijuanainsane asylums? you're scapegoaters, you'reattacking harmless people, and you have no right to do so. they get tired of those lecturesafter a while. and they stop coming around. mayor philip owen in the 1990swas a prohibitionist. he thought, we weregoing to come down hard on these potheads. after we kept talking to himover and over and over again,

he just came around to ourview and became an anti-prohibitionist andan activist, really. spoke out againstthe drug war. brought in the supervisedinjection site. and now vancouver is one of themost tolerant cities in the world for illegal drugs. ryan archibald: though stillillegal, there are several storefront medicinal marijuanadispensaries in vancouver. and since there isn't anofficial set of standards,

their appearances range fromthat of a college dorm room to a more clinical aesthetic. dana larson opened one of thefirst dispensaries in the city and is a key figure in themovement to decriminalize marijuana in british columbia. dana larsen: there's about12 dispensaries in vancouver right now. i think we're one ofthe bigger ones. so this is our daily menu, justof the cannabis buds.

we also have hash and extractsand lotions and tinctures and that kind of stuff. but bud's probably the mostpopular single product. ryan archibald: can anybodycome in off the street and just come in here andorder anything? dana larsen: no, we screen ourpatients quite carefully. and that's really what makesthe difference between a dispensary and someone justselling cannabis. i'm quite confident that thepolice have sent in undercover

officers to say, oh,my back's sore, i forgot my doctor's note. can i buy some cannabis? and the answer is no. i've also worked with otherdispensaries to make sure that we're all following thesame standards. i worry that a rogue dispensarythat decides to sell to anybody or somethingcould hurt it for the rest of us and make us look bad.

we have to operate at a higherstandard, i think, than other businesses because we'reunder such scrutiny. people bring us in productsall the time. they bring us cannabisstrains. they bring us theirhomemade stuff. the vast majority we reject asnot being good enough or high-quality enoughor standardized. but ultimately, it's mostlymade in people's homes. ryan archibald: assuming fromall legalized grow ops?

dana larsen: no, there's no--nothing we do here is legal. in fact, we actually wouldqualify for two-year mandatory minimum sentences underharper's new laws. we have a good relationship withthe vancouver police, and we have a good relationshipwith the city council. i don't feel we're in anyimmediate danger here. but it's certainly not acakewalk, either, and there is a risk involved. and if things did change invancouver, within a month or

so of raids, they could haveus all shut down if they decided to go that route. i believe that the war oncannabis, and really the broader war on drugs, which iwould call the war on the world's most useful andwonderful plants, i think it's one of the most important socialissues of our time. whether it's the environmentalbenefits of growing hemp for industrial use and foragricultural use, or whether it's the medicinal benefitsof the cannabis plant.

and whether it's just the taxdollars we're spending prohibiting cannabis and themoney that we're losing from not having a legallyregulated system. or whether it's theinternational conflicts. our troops in afghanistanare definitely tied into the opium trade. i've always felt that ending thewar on drugs, legalizing, regulating, controlling thesesubstances, is the way to go. and cannabis is theone to start with.

i'm working on a campaigncalled sensiblebc. and the sensiblebc campaign isto try to have a referendum in british columbia to dowhat they did in washington and colorado. 80% of british columbians don'tthink possession of cannabis should be a crime. and about 75% want to see alegalized, regulated system for cannabis in britishcolumbia. so it's a very goodtime right now.

mik mann: you also wrote a bookcalled "hairy pothead and the marijuana stone." dana larsen: when i was readingthe harry potter books to my daughter, and i read allseven of them and did all the voices, i might add. but for me, i could easily seehow this translated into a cannabis world. and a lot of the alchemical,magical kind of stuff that she refers to, a lot of my studiesshow that that's actually

cannabis-related stuff anyway. that's the bong-hit of fire. which, kind of like thegoblet of fire or whatever from harry potter. this one was actually signedfor us by daniel radcliffe, who played harry potter. he appreciated thebook as well. ryan archibald: and is smokingpart of your writing ritual? dana larsen: smoking is partof my life ritual.

so i use cannabis when i'mwriting my book, but i use it when i'm not writingmy book, also. ryan archibald: although thepot scene in vancouver has been allowed to grow withlittle interference from police in recent years, thethreat posed by the government's war on drugs isstill acutely felt, most especially at marc emery'scannabis culture headquarters, ground zero for pot activismin vancouver. we checked in with jodie emery,who's been carrying the

torch for the movement since herhusband, marc, deemed the prince of pot, was put injail four years ago. jodie emery: so here is the bcmarijuana party headquarters. and it starts with thehistory on the walls. the most ancient history at thebottom, all the way up to more recent modern historyat the top. we've got a store on the mainfloor, marc emery's cannabis culture headquarters store. and on the second floor,we have the

museum, the herb museum. and then up on the third floor,the top floor here we're in right now, thebc marijuana party headquarters lounge. and we have the "cannabisculture" magazine office and the pot tv studio also on thistop floor here and utilizing some space downstairs as well. vancouver has always had astrong hippie counterculture established here.

kitsilano used to havea lot of hippies. there's the gastown riots, thegrasstown riots, with the police beating up a potprotest long ago. so there's a lot ofhistory here. mik mann: marc emery had a seedcompany called marc emery direct seeds. and he funneled all themoney from that back into activism projects. his motto was "overgrowthe government."

marc emery: oh, lordy, lordy,the antichrist himself is coming to vancouver. good god. john walters. ryan archibald: john walters wasthe drug czar during the bush administration. and led a luncheonin vancouver. marc emery: and we'regoing to be there. in fact, this is 212grams of pure block

blonde lebanese hash. we're going to slip that intohis briefcase so that when he returns to the united states,he gets arrested. hopefully they throwthe book at him and put him way for life. this stuff smells amazing. ryan archibald: and then whilehe was speaking, they proceeded to heckle him. john walters: of the six millionpeople who could

benefit from treatment that needit in the united states today, 60% are dependenton marijuana. [murmuring] marc emery: there's threemillion of us here who smoke pot, and none of usneed treatment. ryan archibald: so he got veryupset, and you know, he immediately, oh, who the hellare you, i'm john walters. well, he say, i'm marc emery. and then they startedan investigation.

jodie emery: this wasthe seed office. on july 29, 2005, the deawith the vancouver police raided it. they came into the store. there was nowhere in the worldyou could get that many seeds. and mark always promised thatthe money generated would go to legalization activism. and he gave, that he couldremember, $4 million at least. throw the money out, that'swhat the seed money's for.

the whole point was to give itaway and to fund the movement. it was a significant blow. they said it was a significantblow to the legalization movement, and it was. ryan archibald: mark ended upgetting five years in a us prison, which he'sserving now. but it clearly didn't work. and as a matter of fact, theprosecutor in washington state who prosecuted marc emery hassince turned around and been

instrumental in the legalization now in that state. that was john mckay. john mckay: as the former chieffederal prosecutor, i enforced our marijuana laws. i've come to believethey don't work. filling our courts andjails has failed to reduce marijuana use. and drug cartels are pocketingall the profits.

it's time for a new approach. jodie emery: unfortunately forcanada, we've got harper. so we've got a drug war dinosaurin power who's going to be dragging us intothe dark ages. on the same day that coloradolegalized six plants for every adult, our mandatory minimumprison sentences for pot came into effect. six plants will get you aminimum of six months if you own your property, nine monthsif you rent your property.

it'd be a year if you're nearschools and children. so our laws here are gettinga lot worse. we're getting new prisons builtand a lot of money spent cracking down on pot whilethe americans are going the other way. they have a faileddrug war example. why are we implementingit here? and secondly, they're legalizingit already. so they told us we couldn'tlegalize it until they do.

and now they're doing it. so can't we do it now? don't leave us behindin the dark ages. there's so much horriblestuff coming our way with harper in power. this place, god, i hopeit stays here. but they might crackdown really hard. kirk toussaw: well, the mostinteresting thing to me when it comes to the harper war ondrugs and on cannabis users

and growers is how complete arejection of conservative ideology the war ondrugs actually is. i mean, it's really the issueon which a so-called conservative turns exactly intothe caricature that they make of their politicalopponents, big government, big spending, wastefulbureaucracies. and yet that's exactly whatthey're guilty of when it comes to the war on drugs. and so the question markis, why do they

continue to pursue it? it's got to be about power,and it's got to be about social control. and the drug waris an effective tool of social control. it's an effective tool ofcontinued marginalizations of certain population subsets. and it's an ability to funnelgovernment dollars toward special interest groups like theprivate prison industry or

the police lobby. and you can do it while sortof beating yourself on the chest and blathering on aboutprotecting the youth of canada and looking like a heroto sort of parents and people out there. ryan archibald: the conservativegovernment, my biggest problem is, is theyrefuse to listen to evidence, fact, science. and their answers, they don'tanswer questions.

ross lander: they have anideology that would prevent them from giving in to thepublic on something that they think is bad. they think it is bad. once it's bad, the publicshouldn't have it. and that's they're ideology. stephen harper: now i know somepeople say, if you just legalized it, you'd get themoney, and all would be well. but i think that rests on theassumption that somehow, drugs

are bad because they'reillegal. it's not that. the reason drugs are illegalis because they are bad. and even if these things werelegalized, i could predict with a lot of confidence thatthese would never be respectable businesses runby respectable people. ryan archibald: respectable ornot, the illegal marijuana trade continues regardlessof harper's war on drugs. and ironically, the government'sharsh laws are

doing more to support marijuanacriminals than breaking down their networks. it took us a bit of sniffingaround, but we finally found a black market trafficker willingto speak to us and share his deep knowledge of theunderground drug trade. ryan archibald: we're in theinterior of bc, up in the mountains, on our way to grandforks, a town right on the canadian-us border known andrenowned for its growers and smuggling activity.

and we're going to talk to amayor there who used to be a grower himself. it was once estimated that 1in 10 houses in grand forks were grow ops. and where it wasn't uncommon forhockey bags full of weed to be smuggled down theriver to the us. and in fact, the mayorwas elected as an openly pro-pot candidate. but other than having a rathercute urban deer problem, grand

forks was a pretty peaceful,idyllic little town. so it's pretty much commonknowledge that grand forks has a great deal of growops in it. brian taylor: the counterculturemoved out here in the '60s and '70s. and there were a number ofgrowers here who were growing a variety of outdoor plantsbut not sorting the sexes. and all of a sudden, therealization came that if you stopped them from beingpollinated, that you would get

sensimilla, and that would bea highly valuable product across the line. so fortunes were made here bya variety of people who took advantage of that window andgrew outdoors here in good volumes and moved theirproduct across the line with ease. there were no restrictionsat the border. people weren't evenlooking for it. ryan archibald: how wouldlegalization affect this town

of grand forks? brian taylor: it's beenrecognized as of about two years ago as a major economicdriver of the region. so my concern about legalizationis that we keep the production of a legalizedproduct in the kootenays, so we keep it out in the countryand not in the cities in large grow ops that are run bycompanies down there. i think we could have a thrivingwine industry type model that would really keep theeconomic benefit here in

the kootenays and avoid whatwill be a big economic hit if we lose it and it goesto vancouver or goes to the lower mainland. i have a band, buck nakedand the saddle tramps. ryan archibald: oh nice. good name. brian taylor: and we play allthe seniors' events and seniors' halls andthings like that. if you're looking for someoriginal music, we have a

couple of recorded that youcould probably make use of. one called "the marijuanasong" kind of hit big. it was popular around town tothe point where some of the kids learned it and startedsinging it at daycare. [music - brian taylor,"the marijuana song"] ryan archibald: so we were senton our way with a joyful marijuana song. and after all this, there werestill many questions that needed many more answers.

the changes to health canada'sgrow program, mixed with police crackdowns, have sentwhat is one of canada's most successful crops intoan identity crisis. and it's still a wonder as towhether the future of bc bud is in the black marketor as a newly commercialized commodity. in the short term, whileamericans are legalizing weed, canadians can look forward tomandatory minimums placing them into a nice and cozy cellin a super-prison for

something as simple aspassing a joint. derek corrigan: i think in allof british columbia, there is a reaction saying, oh my god,how did washington get out ahead of us on this issue? how did that happen? they made a decision that showsthey're far more aware of the realities of the modernworld than we are here in very liberal canada. stephen harper: we're fallingbehind the states.

what the eff? david: now that'sthe crazy thing. jesse: no doubt. david: like, we should feelashamed about ourselves. we always had this great moralhigh ground that we could be smart and be smug about. and now we're justsmug assholes. brian taylor: we'relosing ground. we're asleep at the switch.

if we were smart, we would havehad a post-prohibitionist plan in place. but the only ones who aretalking about post-prohibition are various kinds of advocateswithin the movement at this point. the government hasn't startedtalking about it. i was hoping that it would bemoral suasion that would turn us in the direction ofending prohibition. but it's going to be money.

mik mann: with colorado andwashington legalizing, there's no more of that, well, the us,you know, they'll shut the border down. we can't-- that's gone. that moral authority hammerthey were holding over the world is finished. and prohibition is unraveling. what will accelerate it, though,is once you start

seeing the money. again, in washington, incolorado, in the first year alone, the savings inenforcement costs, that's what's going to becomeapparent right away. and as soon as they see that,other people, everybody else is going to want a pieceof that pie. jodie emery: the war's not over,and we're never going to win, and it's going tobe victory forever. we're always going to have theprohibitionists trying to make

it illegal again. so it's a fight that will goon well past our lifetimes. but we have to work with thepeople who can change the law. and that happens to be thepeople who have been enforcing the law against us. murray power: i don't see itcoming anytime soon, that's for darn sure. it won't be in my career. i think our governments are--

they've said nothingto suggest that anything's going to change. david malmo levine: what happensin the united states often has a bigger effect onvancouver or british columbia then what happens in ottawa. obama getting a second term andcolorado and washington state legalizing might just havemore of a psychological effect on the police in thistown than ottawa's attempts at bringing in mandatory minimumsdid or does.

we'll see. i'm hopeful. i'm full of hope. you've got to be full of hopeto be in this business. being a drug peace activist. without hope, it's prettydepressing. [music - buck naked andthe saddle tramps, "the marijuana song"] ryan archibald: so what is itthat makes bc bud bc bud?

-i think it's the consumer. i think it's the peoplethat live here. it's like a culture here. you want the best weed, and ithink it creates a demand of higher quality, really good,crystally, awesome bud. and that's why bcbud is the best. want to do a fourthtime or what? [laughter]