POLICE NAB CANNABIS GROWN AT MILITARY FACILITY

MONTREAL -- Drug traffickers who secretly grow marijuana in isolated corners of
Quebec's cornfields have long been a headache for local farmers.

Now drug dealers have taken that practice to a new level of effrontery: growing
their illegal crop on a military facility.

Yesterday, military police riding four-wheel-drive cars and all-terrain
vehicles showed reporters 783 mature cannabis plants they had seized in a
grassy field owned by the Department of National Defence.

The field, about 18 kilometres long by three kilometres wide, is an
ammunition-testing ground near Nicolet, a town roughly midway between Montreal
and Quebec City.

"That took some nerves," said Raymond Gagnon, manager of the testing centre.

There are 60 employees at the centre, but the traffickers probably came at
night, eluding the occasional patrols, he said.

The facility is fenced on three sides, leaving officials to speculate that the
marijuana growers came by boat on the St. Lawrence Seaway side.

The cannabis plants were in about 40 clusters of 20 to 50 plants each.

The military police were tipped by their counterparts in Quebec's provincial
police.

Captain Steve Lebel, a military spokesman, said investigators would probe
whether the operation was the work of outsiders or whether DND employees were
involved.

Farmers have complained for years about pot growers operating in their fields.

Protected by booby traps and hidden at eye level by the taller cornstalks, the
illegal crop can be spotted only from the air.

The problem has been in the news this fall, both because more than 375,000
plants were seized in recent weeks, near harvest time, and because of the
ruthlessness of the traffickers.

For example, on Tuesday, three young men from Trois-Rivieres are believed to
have been beaten up and abducted after trying to steal some of the illegal
marijuana growing in the area's fields.

They were among four would-be thieves who tried to grab some of the illicit
crop.

Chased by traffickers, they tried to hide in a local convenience store.

One hid in the walk-in beer fridge and called police on a cellular phone.

The store owner saw masked men grab the other three, dragging them outside and
beating them with baseball bats.

By the time the Surete du Quebec showed up, the three had been taken away and
are presumed to have been abducted.


Pubdate: Sat, 20 Sep 2003
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2003, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact: letters@globeandmail.ca
Website: http://www.globeandmail.ca/