Drug smugglers turn to northern border

Part I: Guarding America’s border

Second of three parts

HAVRE, Mont. - The “Ghost of Sin Ojos” is an illusive figure known all too well to the Border Patrol agents who prowl the rolling plains here under the big Montana sky, a shadowy visitor dressed in black with no eyes who moves unseen over a strip of land along the Canadian border known as the “Hi-Line.”

“I’ve never personally seen the ghost,” said Border Patrol Senior Agent Larry D. Shields as he guided his four-wheel-drive vehicle along a dirt path near a barbed-wire fence that separates the United States and Canada. “But there’s no doubt he’s out here.”

There’s also no doubt that the ghost has company, an elusive and growing number of drug smugglers, crossing from Canada into the United States — in trucks and cars, on snowmobiles and horseback, in airplanes and on foot — carrying a mountain of illicit drugs, including a new and potent hydroponically grown Canadian marijuana known as “BC bud.”

Using night-vision optics and global-positioning systems to navigate the desolate and often-rugged terrain, the smugglers seek to fulfill a growing demand in the United States for drugs — particularly the high-grade marijuana that sells for up to $6,000 a pound — 10 times the price of Mexican pot.

Illicit drugs such as BC bud have become a billion-dollar industry for Canadian smugglers, and their spread into the United States was inevitable, law-enforcement authorities say.

“Canada has increasingly become a source country for drugs to the United States; there’s no question of that,” said Carl A. Eklund, who heads the Border Patrol’s Colville, Wash., station, describing the principal exports as BC bud, high-purity heroin and precursor chemicals — used to produce synthetic drugs, primarily methamphetamine.

“With regard to BC bud, a number of organized-crime groups in Canada have been identified as suppliers, including outlaw motorcycle clubs and Vietnamese gangs, but some of those involved are simply entrepreneurs, working out of their basements.”

BC bud, whose moniker derives from its origin, British Columbia, has a tetrahydrocannabinol potency rating of 20 percent to 30 percent, compared with an average of 2 percent to 5 percent for marijuana produced elsewhere. That accounts for its high cost.

The U.S. demand for Canada’s growing supply of illicit drugs and no apparent shortage of smugglers has prompted some members of Congress to ask the federal government to reimburse states and municipalities for the multimillion dollar costs of prosecuting those arrested by federal authorities at the northern border.

Separate bills offered by Sen. Maria Cantwell and Rep. Rick Larsen, both Washington Democrats, would authorize $28 million a year. The bills are pending in committee.

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