Warrantless Search Raises Questions

City Bylaw Allows RCMP, Fire to Inspect Home If Hydro Use Deemed High

If the Jensen family is guilty of anything, it's that they are ordinary, say Fay and Lee Jensen.

They run a business in Vancouver, pay their taxes and volunteer their time.

They admit they use a lot of electricity but didn't think that might be a crime, until last week, when the RCMP showed up at their home on Goldstream Drive.

"It was such a bizarre experience," Fay Jensen said of an inspection involving the RCMP, Richmond Fire-Rescue and City of Richmond.

The inspections are part of a crackdown on marijuana grow operations and are permitted under a bylaw that the B.C. Civil Liberties Association suspects may be unconstitutional.

Jensen was at home having a shower on Jan. 28 when she heard her dogs whining. When she looked out the window, she saw two uniformed officials, including a fire inspector, looking around her house outside. She poked her head out a window and asked the fire inspector if there was a problem.

"He said, 'Yeah, you're consuming too much hydro.' It totally took me off guard," Jensen recalls.

The inspector started asking questions, like how many people live in her home. After they left, Jensen went to the front door and saw the officials had placed a large, yellow official notice there stating she had 48 hours to schedule an electrical safety inspection or the family's power would be cut off.

"I flipped when I saw that on my door," Jensen said.

The Jensens called and arranged for the inspection, which took place two days later. Having police cars parked outside their home was "a total embarrassment," Fay Jensen said. "People see a cop at your house and they say, 'What's happening?'"

Two RCMP officers accompanying a fire inspector and electrical safety inspector told the Jensens they would open every door and look in every closet throughout the home, before the inspection was done.

"I thought, 'What is going on?'" Fay Jensen said. "Is this Moscow or what? They don't have to have a search warrant to go through your house. This is a police state."

"They were pretty aggressive when they came," said Lee Jensen, who admits he was aggressive back. "I was pretty ugly to them. This is brown-shirt Germany shit. We're supposed to be living in a free country here."

When an RCMP officer approached a bedroom where the Jensens' two teenaged sons were still sleeping, Fay Jensen got worried.

"He's got his hand on his gun," she said. "This is bloody scary."

Darrell Evans, executive director of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, agrees warrantless searches by police are scary.

"What if one of the kids ran from the room and was carrying a toy shotgun?" he wonders. "This is like the tactics of a police state. I find it completely unacceptable. This is an invasion of privacy."

Marijuana grow ops are often booby-trapped and the growers are sometimes armed, which is why police are needed to do a sweep first.

"The officer, having their hand on their gun, I guess it's upsetting for people to see, but those are the tools we have on our belt," said Cpl. Nycki Basra of the Richmond RCMP.

"We've received no complaint about this," Basra added. "If she's got a complaint, she should call us."

The inspection team found neither marijuana nor any problems with the home's electrical system. What they did find was an outdoor pool, an air conditioning system, two teenagers and a family that has been the target of thieves often enough that they now leave their lights on all the time.

The Jensens knew $200 per month was high for an electrical bill, but didn't think it would result in a search of their home by police.

Such searches only became possible in 2004, when the provincial government introduced the Safety Standards Act. Prior to that, privacy legislation prevented utility companies like B.C. Hydro from releasing information about customers' consumption habits to municipalities or police.

The City of Richmond is one of several municipalities with an electrical safety inspection bylaw, which is aimed at shutting down marijuana grow operations.

Grow-ops consume large amounts of electricity and the growers often rewire the electrical systems, which can pose a fire hazard.

Of the 106 inspections conducted in Richmond since August 2007, the city found 60 grow-ops, Brodie said.

Brodie pointed out that the inspections are voluntary. However, citizens who refuse to allow inspections may find their power cut off.

That was the case in Surrey. In June 2007, a judge ordered the power reconnected to a Surrey home after it was disconnected.

The power was cut off when Jason Arkinstall refused to allow police into his house for an electrical safety inspection.

Like the Jensens, Arkinstall has an outdoor pool, which may account for the highelectrical bill that triggered an inspection.

But he also has a record for drug trafficking, and his lawyer suggested that the electrical safety inspection "is not only being done at the behest of the police but solely for their purposes."

When inspectors showed up, Arkinstall agreed to let inspectors into his home, but not police. His power was cut off.

In June 2007, a judge ordered the power reconnected, and the search is now the subject of a constitutional challenge. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has applied for intervener status in the case. "We have deep concerns that this is being used as a means for warrantless searches," said Micheal Vonn, policy director for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

Her organization fears police may be using "alleged safety concerns" to conduct searches without getting a search warrant, which Vonn said is "obviously problematic from a constitutional perspective." While he supports Richmond's electrical inspection program, Brodie said he will ask for a review of the recent Jensen home inspection.

"I'm going to speak to staff and ask for more information as to this particular inspection and inspections in general, how they're being handled," Brodie said.

"From what I've seen to this point, we're trying to protect the safety of the people, we're trying to protect the safety of property. We're trying to reduce the number of grow-ops in our community. "I think this has been a way to protect our citizens and their property. That doesn't mean it doesn't need to be fine-tuned."

Lee Jensen said he isn't sure he wants to go to court over the recent search of his house. But he wants ordinary citizens who think they are protected from illegal searches that that may not always be the case.

He said citizens who do not speak up against authoritarianism should not be surprised to wake up one day and find they have no freedoms left.

"Do you want to wake up one morning and find out it's all gone?" he said. "I don't want to lose every freedom."

If there is one consolation for the Jensens, it is a letter they received from the city last week informing them that they would not have to pay the $3,500 fee often levied to cover the cost of an inspection.







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Taxing Marijuana Not A Bad Idea

To the Editor:

Taxing marijuana wouldn't be a bad idea, providing sales were regulated and could be taxed. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer can't rely on organized crime to submit tax returns for his budget shortfall plan. There is a big difference between condoning marijuana use and protecting children from drugs. Decriminalization acknowledges the social reality of marijuana and frees users from the stigma of life-shattering criminal records.

What's really needed is a regulated market with age controls. Separating the hard and soft drug markets is critical. As long as marijuana distribution is controlled by organized crime, marijuana consumers will continue to come into contact with sellers of hard drugs like methamphetamine. This "gateway" is the direct result of a fundamentally flawed policy.

Given that marijuana is arguably safer than legal alcohol -- the plant has never been shown to cause an overdose death -- it makes no sense to waste tax dollars on failed policies that finance organized crime and facilitate the use of hard drugs. Students who want to help end the intergenerational culture war otherwise known as the war on some drugs should contact Students for Sensible Drug Policy at SchoolsNotPrisons.com.

Robert Sharpe, MPA

Policy Analyst

Common Sense for Drug Policy, Washington, D.C.



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The Pot Prescription

For more than a decade, Mark Tucci has been perfecting the art of suffering. And before his journey is over, he is bound to become a master. But despite his body being wracked with uncontrollable spasms, a feeling like his legs are being electrocuted and arms that don't react to his thoughts no matter how hard he concentrates, Tucci, of Manchester, does not cry for his own suffering. Tucci, 49, does, however, weep when he thinks about the suffering of others, like when he thinks about dear friends who struggled through their last hours on a hospital bed, contorted, and their "medication" - only a breath away - blocked from ever reaching them by the government.

It is for his fellow suffering human beings that Tucci has written "The Patient's Simple Guide to Growing Marijuana," a simple 31-page booklet for people like him, who are in the throes of a debilitating illness such as multiple sclerosis ( which Tucci has ), advanced HIV/AIDS and cancer. Tucci, at regular intervals throughout an interview with the Banner in late July, puffed on a hand-blown glass pipe and a marijuana cigarette. The smoked substance was marijuana: a drug that the state of Vermont not only allows him to smoke, but also permits it to be grown for him at a secure, undisclosed location. When smoked, marijuana eases Tucci's pain, he said, and also restores his hunger after his appetite is killed from a number of medications he takes. Tucci is not alone.

There are 29 people licensed to possess and grow small amounts or marijuana in Vermont, and there are also five licensed caregivers, who go through a criminal background check and grow solely for sick friends, clients or family. To get a license in Vermont, sick individuals must apply online, fill out a registry form, have a physician's confirmation and send in two self-portraits, Tucci said. If denied, the applicant can go before a three person panel for review and reconsideration. With the passage of bill S.76 in 2004, Vermonters with AIDS, or the health equivalent of AIDS, cancer and MS are permitted to grow one mature marijuana plant, two immature plants and to possess two ounces of the cured product. Possessing more than this amount can put the individual at risk of being arrested.

Tucci has been taking all kinds of prescribed drugs since he first became ill with MS in 1994. After years of taking medications, he has found that marijuana eases his symptoms more than most. MS is a disease that attacks the sheath on nerve endings, and when those sheaths are destroyed, it sends mixed signals to the brain, causing blindness, paralysis, muscle weakness, tremors and spasms.

"Basically, it's your nervous system attacking itself," said Tucci. Tucci said the result is pain, and lots of it. "I've got pain. Like five different kinds of pain," Tucci said. "When you have the flu, and the body ache pains and stuff like that, I get that all the time. My legs feel like someone beat on them, I'm on an electric fence, and my feet are burning at the same time. And I have spasms, a lot of spasticity in different parts of the day, but mostly in the morning. Obviously, I don't walk and run like I used to."

As a result of the MS and restricted movement, Tucci's muscles have atrophied, and he walks with the deftness of a drunkard.

His spasticity, as he calls it, is so bad that his torso and legs can contract in the middle of the night to the point when they'll almost touch. His mind, though, is fine. That wasn't always the case. "I'm much more aware than when I was on narcotics and things like that," he said. Narcotic pills, of which Tucci was given a laundry list by doctors to take daily, suppressed his immune system.

It was a counterproductive treatment, Tucci said, that did more harm than good. Marijuana, on the other hand, helped Tucci more than most of the pharmaceutical drugs combined, he said. Further, he didn't build a tolerance to the drug, unlike other narcotic medications.

It's the phenomenon of "reverse tolerance," Tucci said. "You take any drug - alcohol, cigarettes, synthetic drugs of any kind, and you start doing it, and you will have to at some point do more to maintain the same high, to get the same happiness out of it. You talk to any old hippie, any old pothead, any sick person puffing weed for 20 years, they still just have to take a few hits. Isn't that amazing?

No matter how bad things are in my pain spasm world, I don't have to juice up with four joints in the morning. It's been the only drug - this and the Neurotin - that have maintained their usefulness that I haven't built up a tolerance to. What a blessing that is? Holy crap, let me tell you." Tucci was no stranger to marijuana before his MS took hold. He grew up in Danby in the 1960s and '70s, he explained.

Back then, he used pot recreationally. Whereas Tucci smoked only occasionally 30 years ago, now it's daily.

He smokes about four joints a day, sometimes even in the middle of the night to ease the wild contractions of his body. "It keeps it at bay and knocks the spasms out," he said. "It helps you eat, and it helps your attitude and helps you through the periods when you feel like crap." In writing his book, Tucci hoped to take the glamour and the mystery out of growing marijuana. Tucci believes there are many more who could reap its medicinal benefits. Tucci said that other people who are suffering - such as those with Krohn's disease, fibromyalgia and other auto-immune illness - should be allowed by the state to use medical marijuana. He said his book is for these people, and for people who just don't understand what marijuana is about.

"It tells you how to grow in the simplest terms in accordance with Vermont law," Tucci said. His target audience is sick people in the 11 states where medical marijuana has been legalized to an extent, such as Maine, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Kerry Sleeper is the state's commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, the branch of government responsible for the oversight of both Vermont's legal and illegal pot users. He said the law was drafted in such a way to prevent abuse by people seeking the ability to grow and sell marijuana for profit by focusing narrowly on the very ill people who make use of it.

"In the sense of law that was passed, I don't believe that there's any significant abuse of it," Sleeper said in an interview Wednesday. However, Sleeper said the drug grown for people like Tucci is not "medical marijuana," but rather a drug permitted for "compassionate use" by the state. He said there is no concrete evidence that marijuana has medicinal benefits, but that it does seem to provide some kind of solace for people dealing with end-of-life issues and long-term, debilitating illness.

The intent of the law then, according to Sleeper, was to permit the use of marijuana for only this group of people. Sleeper said he would advocate against any kind of expansion of S.76, as it would be counter-productive to the efforts the state and his department are making in a long-standing battle against substance abuse, especially with Vermont's youth.

"We can't be hypocrites and recognize that we have a substance abuse problem and then advocate marijuana use," said Sleeper, a former state trooper and former head of the Vermont Drug Task Force with nearly 30 years of law enforcement under his belt. Further, Sleeper believes the same groups of people who advocate for expansion of medical marijuana laws are often working for the same organizations that promote total marijuana legalization.

S.76 passed in 2004, with the help of people like state Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington/Wilmington, a legislator who has always been a strong proponent of law enforcement. Sears said Wednesday that the next legislative session would be a good time to review how S.76 has worked so far, and to expand and overhaul the scope of the law. Sears, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he believes the law should be expanded to include people who suffer from diseases like Krohn's and fibromyalgia, despite Sleeper's recommendation to do otherwise. Sears would also like to see the law shift the oversight from the Department of Public Safety to the Department of Health.

"It clearly to me is a health issue," Sears said. But Sears said he is far from approving the uncontrolled growing of marijuana throughout the state.

For him, the marijuana grown and used by people dealing with impending death or severe pain and discomfort still needs to be regulated.

"Like any prescription drug, if you abuse it, you ought to be held accountable for that," Sears said. "It's the obligation of the user to use it responsibly."

The rules regarding how much a sick person or caregiver could grow would also change if Sears has his way. He acknowledges, just as Tucci does, that one mature plant and two ounces of cured marijuana does not give people what they need to manage their illnesses successfully. He said the original Senate version of the bill provided more leeway than the current law, and that's a direction he'd like the state to move. However, Sears said he wasn't always a believer in marijuana use. That changed after he heard from the family members of those dying from cancer and from people like Tucci.

"The most dramatic thing for me was the testimony," Sears said, who led the committee that oversaw the birth of the bill in the Senate. "When you hear the testimony, you really get a feel for what these folks are going through.

If people could hear more of Mark's story, and more people like him, they'd be convinced." Before recently retiring, Sears ran 204 Depot Street, a half-way house for delinquent youth aged 14 to 18. He knows all too well the dangers of drugs and alcohol, he said.

"I'm certainly not one to want to legalize drugs," Sears said. "It's just that I think we have a substance ( in marijuana ) that many people find relief from." With some expected resistance to the expansion of the law, Tucci still advocates for the sick and those who cannot advocate for themselves. His book, he said, is for them.

"Someone in every state knows someone who is sick, someone who can be helped by this," Tucci said. "So if you live in a state like Illinois or Connecticut, that's had legislation introduced for three or four years now, even though it's not legal, buy my book and become an activist and write a little letter to your ( legislator ). Call someone and say, 'Hey, this does help this person.' It's meant for that."

Tucci's book is available online at - - www.patientssimpleguide.com- ( http://www.patientssimpleguide.com/ ) and sells for $10.50.

Pressure Mounts To Keep Injection Site

PRESSURE MOUNTS TO KEEP INJECTION SITE

Canada's Health Minister Tony Clement was put under the spotlight yesterday when supporters of a safe-injection site for IV drug users demanded to know whether the federal government was going to renew its legal exemption.

But Mr. Clement was not providing hints on what the future holds for Vancouver's landmark safe-injection site, which sparked the concern of doctors, researchers and drug users.

"The evidence is irrefutable," Julio Montaner, director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS and president-elect of the International AIDS Society, said at a press conference yesterday.

Researchers cited studies they had done on Insite, a place where drug addicts get clean needles, medical help in the event of an overdose and assistance entering detoxification programs, should they desire it. For instance, a study published in The Lancet found the safe-injection site has reduced overall rates of needle-sharing in the community. ( Those who share needles run the risk of spreading HIV. )

The safe-injection site -- the only one in North America -- was granted a three-year operating exemption by the previous Liberal government under Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. That exemption ends on Sept. 12.

Without it, Insite, which accommodates more than 600 drug addicts each day, would have to shut down.

During the last federal election campaign, while still Opposition Leader, Stephen Harper said he was opposed to providing government support for the use of illegal drugs.

And that has made people such as Mark Townsend, with the Portland Hotel Society, the non-profit affordable housing charity that administers Insite in conjunction with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, concerned.

Mr. Townsend was concerned enough that he attempted to confront Mr. Clement about the federal government's position in the morning at the International AIDS conference, without much success.

But by afternoon and in front of an audience of about 1,000 people, Mr. Townsend made the bold move of jumping on stage, where members of a panel that included Mr. Clement were discussing HIV vaccine research. Mr. Townsend took to the podium, where he stressed the importance of the Vancouver site. The B.C. government lent its weight yesterday to the campaign to keep the safe-injection site operating.

Weighing in on the controversy for the first time, Premier Gordon Campbell said he feels the clinic has done a good job of improving services to people. He noted that numerous studies, including one commissioned by the RCMP, have reported positive benefits from the site.

"We think it's a positive step, and we believe it should continue. We have let the federal government know that," Mr. Campbell told reporters, after announcing a mid-term cabinet shuffle.

Its supporters unexpectedly found another ally in former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who, at another press conference yesterday, spoke in favour of harm-reduction measures like needle-exchange programs and safe-injection sites for intravenous drug users.

While he did not specifically mention the Vancouver site, Mr. Clinton did say the scientific evidence clearly shows that these programs reduce the transmission of HIV-AIDS and do not lead to higher rates of drug use.

Mr. Clinton's position is particularly notable because, as president, he opposed harm-reduction measures.

"I think I was wrong," Mr. Clinton said candidly.

Meanwhile, Mr. Clement announced yesterday an immediate, comprehensive review of the legislation that was supposed to send less expensive, generic versions of HIV-AIDS drugs to Africa. Calling the legislation flawed, he said it must be reviewed sooner rather than later. Canada's Access to Medicines Regime is two years old but not one pill has been exported.

Thinking In The Wright Direction

THINKING IN THE WRIGHT DIRECTION

Blair Wright, the man behind the Alberta timothy success story wants to undertake another alternative crop market.

Hemp crops, which are similar in biomass to timothy would allow farmers to diversify their crop choices while maintaining the existing infrastructure in the agriculture processing sector.

"You've got to start sometime," said Wright. "I don't think there is a farmer out there who thinks we shouldn't have more crop choices, especially in this part of the world where the choices are slim."

Wright, who is the former president and co-founder of Transfeeder Inc. in Olds, saw an opportunity years ago to ship high fibre timothy hay into Asian markets. Now with the timothy market declining, he has been thinking hemp for the last five years.

With the help of Trevor Kloeck, senior development officer of bioindustrial development for Alberta Agriculture they presented it to Mountain View County council during their July 19 meeting of policies and priorities committee.

Olds and surrounding areas may need to look to Europe for innovations in the commercial production and use of industrial hemp.

Deemed the world's premier renewable resource by the Government of Canada and since the lifting of a 60-year ban, hemp has seen a re-emergence worldwide as the market becomes a thriving and commercial success.

Kloec, feels that Alberta, especially Peace River Country and areas on the eastern slopes of the Rockies, the black soil areas of the province, are optimum locations for hemp production.

"This is a great growing area for these crops, we can produce these crops in large volumes, it has good transportation volume ... so from a business standpoint in the province the Highway two corrider in general is the best place around for it," said Kloeck.

There are a few challenges that the industry is facing.

"There are no grading standards," said Wright. "The harvesting process is not easy."

With Europe ahead of the curve in the production and use of industrial hemp, Canada will have to play catch-up in order to advance our technology, especially in the harvesting and processing machinery.

"We don't have to start all over again. We can take what Europe has and utilize it here," Wright said.

From 1982 to 2002, Europe provided the equivalent of $50 million to develop new flax and hemp harvesting and fibre processing technologies. The similarities between flax and hemp have furthered the technological advancement for both products because the technology developed for one is usually adaptable to the other.

Although Europe is advanced on the technological side, it has failed to generate the biomass needed to get the industry going because of the small parcels of land typically found in European farms. Kloeck feels without the restrictions of land mass, that Canada would be able to set a global standard in the industry.

"We can catch up or pass our competitors very quickly if we get our act together," Kloeck said. "This is an industry on the verge of getting big."

So far, the province of Manitoba has been the leading force in Canada as far as industrial hemp growing.

With organizations like the Saskatchewan Hemp Association and Manitoba Industrial Hemp Association it's hard to imagine why Alberta is lagging behind.

Economics may be the biggest factor, since little hemp has been harvested in Alberta, cost information for hemp production is difficult to obtain.

New entrants to the industry must be prepared to carefully assess the profitability and cash flow implications of their proposed operation.

Kloeck is hoping to see Alberta's involvement change in the near future.

Wright also feels that Canada has a window of opportunity with the United States typically choosing to be anti-drug.

The stigma attached to the crop, although it has 0.03 per cent THC levels, while marijuana has somewhere between five and 25 per cent, is what is holding the American market back.

"This stuff has no drug in it, no THC," said Wright.

All the challenges aside, Wright is still thinking of the positives.

"When you think about hemp, and its biomass per acre, it is one of the highest yielding crops in this part of the world," Wright said.

Wright, who appears young at heart, also feels that he may not have the energy it will take to see this project to fruitation.

"Do I want to start this?" Wright said. "Maybe a younger man should take it on. This will take a lot of energy and a sizeable investment."

If it is anything like the timothy process, he could be labouring through the process for another 20 years.

"I have been a little bit of an innovator," Wright said modestly. "I can get people motivated, but you have to make sure the trend and the timing is right."

With rumours of the province administering a $100 million rural development fund, to be administered through county or municipal districts, Wright and Kloeck hope to ensure industrial hemp production will see some government dollars.

"You want to leave an indelible footprint in rural Alberta," Wright said. "And I think in 20 years we will see the bio-economy take a step forward."

Murders, Assaults And Overdoses, The City's Heart Is Bleeding

MURDERS, ASSAULTS AND OVERDOSES, THE CITY'S HEART IS BLEEDING

If all goes according to plan, Toronto mayoral candidate Jane Pitfield will take a walk on the wild side tomorrow with a tour of the epicentre of a ghetto in this city that is saturated with illegal rooming houses, homeless shelters, derelict buildings, crack dens, drug dealers, alcohol detox centres, substance-abuse clinics, low-end hooker strolls and condom-littered alleyways spiked with discarded syringes.

And all within a few blocks of the Eaton Centre.

It should be an eye-opener for the Ward 26 councillor who hails from the leafy quietude of Leaside -- even if she is co-chairman of both the Homeless and Socially Isolated Committee and the Aboriginal Affairs Committee.

This ghetto, of course, has its bull's eye at the corner of Jarvis and Shuter, and ripples out from there -- east to River, west to Church, south to King, and north to Carlton.

It is where this city bottoms out, and where crime is chronic.

According to a 2005 United Way report, this small patch of the city's core has more social services agencies dealing with the poor, the disenfranchised and the addled than any other section of Toronto, making oft-maligned Parkdale a veritable paradise by comparison.

Super-Sized Shelter

It has the lowest median income in the city, at $15,000, an unemployment rate of 11.5%, and a population in which 44% of the people lack a secondary school education.

And city hall seems not to care about the continuing erosion and decay -- at least not Mayor David Miller and certainly not local councillor Kyle Rae.

But there is an election in November.

There are those who write about this part of town who know little or nothing about it. But I do. It is where I live while searching for the fodder for this space, in a basement apartment right by the aforementioned bull's eye.

And there is little here that I have not witnessed, including the aftermath of murders, assaults and overdoses.

Drug dealing is done openly.

A few metres down a lane from where I live, the Salvation Army is tearing down its Harbour Light Mission at the corner of Jarvis and Shuter and, with funds from the province and the feds and the approval of city hall, it will begin building a facility virtually double in size -- with 100 units of transitional housing for the homeless, and a 100-bed residential care hostel for drug addicts.

From the outside looking in, this is good.

But, according to research by those who oppose it, led primarily by the optimistically named Garden District Residents Association, this project will only oversaturate an area already saturated with everything but an officially declared red-light district and legalized shooting galleries.

And the group has a legitimate argument.

Within four blocks of the Sally Ann's planned redevelopment, for example, some 20-plus agencies are involved in administering 2,500 emergency shelter beds, 12 group homes for criminal offenders, 20 group homes for the mentally ill, six harm-reduction resource centres handing out free needles and crack pipes, 1,000 long-term care beds, thousands of social housing units and 18 cooperatives designed for affordable housing.

All close to the bull's eye.

If this is not ghetto creation, then what is it?

And then there is what has been referred to as "demolition by decay," a phenomenon which city hall bureaucrats cannot combat because there is no bylaw in existence to force developers to maintain minimum standards of maintenance for buildings that have gone derelict.

A prime example is Walnut Hall, described by the Toronto Star's architecture columnist, Christopher Hume, as the only block of Georgian townhouses left standing in the city.

That row of old homes, on the north bank of Shuter, just east of Jarvis, has been boarded up and unheated for the last 20 years. When bricks began falling off the building, the owner, Joe Jonatan, was ordered by the city to put up protective fencing, but that was it -- with Jonatan's excuse being that it has taken "longer than expected" to come up with a feasible business plan to make Walnut Hall work.

Where's The Planning

The block, however, is now for sale, with $2.2 million reportedly being the asking price for this ruin.

But, as Hume wrote back in July: "In some cities, a developer like Joe Jonatan would be heavily fined for his actions and even have his property expropriated. In Toronto, ( however ), we have no choice but sit by and watch as he lets a unique and valuable heritage site fall apart."

Eva Curlanis-Bart is the president of the Garden District Residents Association, and the woman who will be escorting Pitfield on tomorrow's scheduled walkabout -- one that has been confirmed by Pitfield's special assistant, Paul Virdo, as definitely being on her agenda.

A year ago, to prove one of her many points about the decay and ghettoization of her neighourhood, Curlanis-Bart pulled statistics compiled by 51 Division which showed police being involved in more than 1,200 "interventions" in her district -- and that's just in the roominghouses alone.

"What has happened to urban planning, to balancing the socio-economic mix of neighbourhoods?" she asked.

"Victimhood, expediency and political correctness are not substitutes for vision, wisdom, justice and courage."

Tomorrow, therefore, will be Pitfield's opportunity to see for herself what Miller and Rae tend to see with a blind eye.

Hopefully she will not be wearing blinders.

Argentine Cocaine Trade Growing

ARGENTINE COCAINE TRADE GROWING

Traffickers are setting up cocaine labs in Argentina, long merely a transit point for cocaine, and creating new addicts with 'paco,' a cheap, toxic byproduct with a short, intense high.

'Paco' boosts Argentine drug trade

Matias Salas tried marijuana when he was 11. By age 17, he smoked pot every day, sniffed cocaine when he could get it and was a regular user of pills.

Then, a new drug hit Argentina.

"I have never tried anything so addictive in my life. I am no rookie, but this just hit me like a log. I couldn't stop," says Salas, now 20 and one of thousands of working-class youths in that country hooked on smoking paco.

Experts say the sudden availability of paco, also known as basuco, is a sign that cocaine is being produced in Argentina. The white crystals, left over from refining coca paste into cocaine, are too cheap and low in quality to make them worth transporting. So wherever cocaine is refined, paco is sold.

This is a turning point for the drug business in Argentina, which until recently was only a transit point for Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian cocaine largely on its way to Europe.

Argentina's counter-drug officials attribute the surge of cocaine laboratories to their efforts to control the export of chemicals used to refine coca paste into cocaine.

"Traffickers have changed their strategy. Instead of taking the chemicals to countries where the coca paste is produced, they bring the coca paste here and they install laboratories, primarily in the outskirts of Buenos Aires," says Jose Ramon Granero, director of Argentina's counter-drug agency, known as SEDRONAR.

Cocaine seizures in the country doubled in 2004 compared to 1999, and authorities discovered 10 clandestine cocaine laboratories in 2003, 20 in 2004 and 14 last year. Granero says seizures so far "are in line with last year's."

The State Department's 2006 international drug report said there was evidence that more drug trafficking organizations are entering Argentina, lured by the advanced chemical industry there and the low risk in shipping the coca paste into the country.

Paco is at the lowest rung of the drug business ladder.

In Argentina, paco-laced cigarettes are sold almost out in the open in poor neighborhoods -- even in kiosks that sell regular cigarettes and candy -- addicts say. A paco cigarette goes for 30 U.S. cents, compared to $1.50 for a marijuana joint.

"In my barrio, it's everywhere. It's very easy to get," Salas told The Miami Herald in a telephone interview from Fundacion Manantiales, a nonprofit Buenos Aires organization that treats addicts with government money.

Salas checked in voluntarily and has been living in the rehab center for four months. He says he tried to quit paco once on his own, but he relapsed. Now he doesn't want to return to the working-class neighborhood where he grew up until he is certain he can stay clean.

Paco is highly addictive because its effect is so short -- a couple of minutes -- and so intense that many users resort to smoking 20 to 50 cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger.

Used regularly, it can devastate a person physically, emotionally and mentally within six months, says Cristian Laclau, a spokesman for Fundacion Manantiales.

Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals, with just a dab of cocaine, said Jim Hall, executive director of Up Front Drug Information Center, a Miami nonprofit that has been tracking cocaine abuse for more than two decades.

Argentine media reports have blamed the surge of paco consumption -- up 200 percent to an estimated 50,000 users to 70,000 users in the last four years, according to local authorities -- on the 2001 economic meltdown that pushed thousands of Argentines into poverty and despair.

But authorities and experts look north for the answer.

The multimillion-dollar U.S.-backed Plan Colombia is disrupting the operations of traffickers there and forcing them to look for new bases for their business, said Eduardo Gamarra, of Florida International University's Latin American and Caribbean Center.

Farther south, the recent election of President Evo Morales in Bolivia, which capped three years of political instability in that country, raised concerns that his policy to clamp down on cocaine but decriminalize coca farming for traditional, legal uses may result in more paste shipped to its neighbors.

There are no statistics available, but the Argentine and U.S. governments, and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, agree that most of the coca paste entering Argentina comes from Bolivia, the world's third-largest cultivator of coca leaves after Colombia and Peru.

Argentina and Bolivia share a long, porous border through which coca paste is smuggled, Granero says. It enters the country in small planes that land on clandestine airstrips, by truck in cargo containers, or in boats.

"The border is very extended, in some places inhospitable and almost deserted, in others made of small rivers. It's difficult to patrol," Granero says.

The State Department's 2006 drug report said Argentine authorities had expressed concern that Bolivia's new policy, dubbed "Yes to coca, no to cocaine," could greatly increase the production of illegal drugs there.

But Granero was far more diplomatic.

'We think Evo Morales has good intentions. But his policies will be measured by the results. If 'Yes to coca, no to cocaine' results in an excess of coca leaves, we'll have to see where that excess goes."