British Columbia is known worldwide for it’s famous “BC Bud”. In Vancouver, you’re more likely to catch a whiff of a freshly sparked blunt than you are to catch aromas of say, a nearby restaurant. Everyone seems to smoke pot in this city, and just about anywhere you go, people young and old can be seen (or smelled) sparking up. The city is even home to The Amsterdam Café, where patrons can order a latté and blaze a phatty free from any type of legal hassle.

If you prefer the outdoors, a comrade to smoke with can be found just about anywhere. From Stanley Park to the nearest Starbucks patio, there is always someone getting or down with getting faded.

Purchasing weed is a breeze too! Several neighborhood stores sell the stuff like cigarettes, dealers openly peddle nickel and dime bags on some of the city’s busiest streets, and even convenient home-delivery services are readily available. No wonder the BC cannabis industry is valued at more than $8 billion per year.

Now, everyone knows that the weed/dope game is run by illicit organizations, and that shouldn’t be anything new. Perhaps that’s why I find it humorous when The Vancouver Sun runs stories on their front page with headlines like: “Illegal Drug Industry Booming With Potent New Products” as if it’s new information, and as if the “new” products really are new.

The article opens with a summary of The RCMP’s Drug Situation Report 2006, released Monday. It pretty much says criminal organizations are a driving force behind the drug trade and have grown from one-drug shops into sophisticated multi-commodity trafficking, importing and exporting groups, transforming Canada’s “once flat market into a multi-dimensional booming industry.” Haven’t we known this for years? Are they wasting money on reports that are telling us the same thing over and over?

The article then goes onto say: “Police are particularly concerned about two new innovations: “budder” and “cheese.” Now I’ll admit, I have never heard of “cheese” (a deadly concoction of heroin and nighttime cold medicine), but “budder” (an inhaled cannabis derivative believed to have emerged in Vancouver in 2004, that has THC levels ranging from 82 per cent to 99.6 per cent, and is much more potent than smoked marijuana) is nothing new. Anyone that grew up in BC can tell you that.

All you have to do is Google “how to make pot butter”, or ask your hippie parents how they used to make their “special brownies” and you’re good to go. Secondly, pure THC crystal can be purchased with the same convenience as a $.99 slice of pizza. And for the do-it-yourself type, “bud busters” that gather excess crystals otherwise lost during the bidding process can be purchased from one of many weed stores around the city.

The article also states that BC pot is becoming more potent. Interesting. I remember my mother telling me that about 10 years ago: “When I was a kid we could smoke them like cigarettes… now one toke can kill you!” Okay, maybe she exaggerated, but the point is, they knew this 10 years ago. We know it now. Good thing our tax dollars are spent to confirm it.

Other “groundbreaking” trends: private aircraft are increasingly used to smuggle drugs between B.C. and the United States; BC cannabis products, which include marijuana and hashish, are consumed by millions of customers around the world; drug revenues are used to finance other illicit activities like smuggling guns from the U.S. into Canada; and the annual Canadian marijuana production is estimated at between 1,399 and 3,498 tonnes - most of which comes from BC.

Also quoted in the article is Darryl Plecas, a criminology professor at the University College of the Fraser Valley, who said “B.C. has been a hotbed of organized crime groups because of a perception they could set up drug labs with little chance of repercussion” and that “People are going to get a rude awakening, All of these newcomers coming in and producing opium or whatever they’re doing, they’re going to find soon here there’s going to be changes.” I am not sure what type of changes Plecas foresees, but I am pretty sure that the “war on drugs”, especially in BC, will never be won.