CNN
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (CNN) -- When Canadian cocaine smuggler Charles Lai was being sentenced in a Seattle federal courtroom last month, the judge sending him to prison for 13 years offered a small item of good news.
A suspected gang member in Vancouver is taken out of a bar in handcuffs.
At least behind bars, Judge James Robart said, drug smuggler Lai would not become another fatality in Vancouver's gang wars.
Authorities in Vancouver, just 30 miles from the border, are struggling to deal with the boom in the drug trade between the United States and Canada, along with the violence that has come with it.
Cocaine from Mexico -- and many of the guns that fuel the violence -- come north via the United States. Canadian smugglers then bring south high-quality marijuana known as "BC Bud" and synthetic drugs like methamphetamine. A recent U.N. drug report named Canada as the "primary" supplier of Ecstasy to the United States.
This won't help the Vancouver real estate market. Tom
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