Anti-drug efforts beefed up along US-Canada border

[JonLP24]

Source: Washington Post

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. -- The world's longest undefended border. It's a catchy yet increasingly imprecise term for the U.S.-Canada frontier, as authorities on both sides ratchet up efforts to curb bustling traffic in illegal drugs and guns.

The U.S. Border Patrol has tripled the number of agents along the 5,500-mile border in recent years, with hundreds more soon to be deployed. Unmanned U.S. surveillance aircraft are being tested for use over the frontier, and video surveillance towers are going up around Buffalo and Detroit. Multi-agency, binational law enforcement teams operate in 15 regions from coast to coast.

The U.S.-Mexico border draws far more attention, and more American resources, as Mexican drug cartels fuel killings and corruption with massive trafficking operations. Thousands of Mexican troops battle the cartels in a conflict that has killed more than 11,000 people since late 2006.

By comparison, the scale of drug violence and trafficking in Canada is minuscule. Yet the northern border, mostly out of the spotlight, presents its own challenges - hard to monitor due to its length and geography, used by a diverse array of traffickers ranging from outlaw motorcycle gangs to Asian-run drug rings.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/25/AR2009072501362.html

[sasquatch]

1. Will Nothwestern Americans have to go back to smoking ditchweed?

[Flaneur]

2. Nah, there's plenty of kind bud grown in WA, OR, and NorCal

The Canadians keep all the kindest of their bud north of the border anyway and just send us the commercial kind.

[juno jones]

4. Hells no.

I buy local.

However, the smokeshop commercials from north of the border blow me away. You can't say 'bongs' on the radio!(at least not here...) :rofl:

[bluesmail]

3. And I thought they were cracking down on pharmaceuticals with

a script. (That may be coming). No need for tinfoil hat simile. I think.