The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 12

SPECIAL REPORT 1 When Inhaled as a drug for sex, Canada and the United States both ban 'poppers which police believe are being sold out of Delta by AAA Packaging THE VANCOUVER SUN, SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 2001 From Al officials say they don't know how the goods get there. A search of the worldwide web shows a dot-com company registered in Perry's Delta warehouse offers to mail the poppers to customers. Tony Perry, who is called Anthony Samuel Perry on his many business licences, lives with a woman called Roxanne Perry and five Mexican children whose own backgrounds remain a mystery in a sprawling ranch-house on an acreage in Aldergrove. From the house, he runs a federally registered company called The Best Pack Media (BPM) Ltd. that is in the business of distributing magazines and films, according to documents filed in Ottawa.

He would not comment for this report. Poppers were originally produced to be inhaled in emergencies by people suffering chest pain and on the verge of a heart attack. They contained pharmaceutical amyl nitrite a member of the same chemical family as isobutyl nitrite which is known to lower blood pressure. More modern drugs replaced the drug in emergency medicine, but by 1970 a few gay men had started using poppers as a recreational drug, believing their ability to lower blood pressure made sex more satisfying, a report in the New Yorifc Native gay newspaper said in 1989. "By 1974, the poppers craze was in full swing and by 1977 poppers were in every corner of gay life," the report said.

But the drug was not conducive to life, the report said. Ailments linked to poppers in the 1980s included anemia, lung damage, skin burns, confusion, i i i I t' j' I I- (h -A 'MS, VT f' a Is -f "Sa 5 vi I i i A This is very important as they are mood altering." Jungle Juice ads are more blatant. "Jungle Juice is a liquid incense With pop!" says an ad for the product on a Web site called www.lockerroom.net "It will invigorate, excite and stimulate you! When inhaled, Jungle Juice relaxes the round muscles of the body. This provides a more pleasurable feeling when having sex." The Web Site is registered to Lunn, and its address is listed as the AAA warehouse. Under its Z-Best trade name, the drug's manufacturers sponsor the annual Mr.

B.C. Leather competition, a brawn-and-beau-ty pageant for gay leather-fetishists. Lunn is featured in a photograph on the Mr. B.C. Leather Web site.

Corporate records show Lunn was also president and director of a now-defunct company called Aroma Concepts International, which changed its named in 1998 to Marketing Ltd. Lunn is still president of which does business out of the AAA warehouse in Delta. Documents obtained under U.S. freedom of information laws show a U.S. agency called the Consumer Product Safety Commission seized records from a Blaine company called Transborder Mail in 1998.

The records show merchandise from Perry and Lunn's companies was entering the States from Transborder. Transborder is a company specializing in mailing flyers, brochures and other merchandise to U.S. customers. Company president Morley Biden told U.S. investigators that 98 per cent of his business was the bulk mailing of magazines and other flyers, and that the remaining business was the handling of shipments of product on behalf of AAA Packaging and Aroma Concepts International.

The consumer investigators would not disclose why they started investigating Biden's company. Contacted by telephone, Biden told the Sun he was put in contact with AAA Packaging by a truck driver and did not solicit the business. He said AAA's product arrived in UPS and Purolator trucks, which would also be carrying goods such as coffee and mints bound for U.S. clients. The goods in the trucks had already been cleared at the border by US.

customs agents. "We had no reason to open the cartons," he said. "They would clear customs at the border." A US. customs agent made an "unannounced on-site visit" to Transborder's warehouse Feb. 12, 1998, and seized documents showing the company had handled 77 separate importations of product for Perry and Lunn with an estimated wholesale value of $328,779 US, said a consumer agency internal report.

"A review of the invoices showed that a total of 491,916 units of product had been distributed. The total distributed by AAA Packaging Ltd. was 481,932 units. The total for AC International was 9,984 units," the report said. The consumer agency report noted that Biden had visited the Delta warehouse leased by Perry- "During this visit, Mr.

Biden stated he observed various manufacturing equipment. It was Mr. Biden's belief the liquid contents of the product were manufactured and packaged at this location," the JN ALEX WATERHOUSE-HAYWARDVANCOUVER SUN Tony Perry (above) Is a director police to be selling Isobutyl nitrite for use as a drug. customers, advising them the poppers contained "a banned hazardous product" and asking them to "voluntarily stop the sale and distribution." The product safety commission further requested that Biden "contact your customers to stop the sale and distribution of these butyl nitrite substances," an internal agency report said. Biden later sent letters to all the customers on his invoice lists customers in almost every U.S.

state. Compliance officer Thelma Tucker of the San Francisco office of the product safety commission wrote in an internal memo that Biden at first said he hoped AAA Packaging would deal with the warning to customers. "I reminded Mr. Biden that while AAA Packaging is the manufacturer, AAA Packaging is a Canadian company over which of AAA Packaging, believed by U.S. CPSC does not have jurisdiction; whereas, Transborder Mail is the importer of record within the United States over which the CPSC does have jurisdic AAA Packaging may have known that an enforcement action was about to come dowa On April 15, 1998, a letter signed "Roberto Ama, bookkeeper, AAA Packaging" was sent to Biden, asking him to return all his records.

"Year-end is fast approaching for our company and you know how this can be a bit of a paia The purpose of this letter is to kindly ask if you can send us all of your records back to us. We would appreciate this very much. Thank you for your help," the letter said. Biden replied that AAA already had its original invoice records and he refused to comply with the 'early 1970s, Tony Perry's company Imported the controversial child pornography publication Moppets. Henry Lunn's photo on the Mr.

B.C. Leather Web site: His firm sponsors the competition for gay leather fetishists. vertigo, fainting, brain damage from cardiovascular collapse, and death. Today, the makers of Viagra warn that combining their drug with poppers can kill. Under pressure from gay activist groups, the Reagan administration agreed in 1989 to ban any isobutyl nitrite substance "used for inhaling or otherwise introduced into the body for euphoric or physical effects." The drug is also on the list of Canadian restricted pharmaceutical drugs, making it illegal to sell it over the counter.

Two years after the US. ban, Great Lakes Products Co. of Indianapolis, Indiana, which called itself the world's largest manufacturer of poppers with annual sales of $50 million US, announced it was going out of business because it could no longer manufacture or sell its product. By 1997, Tony Perry had moved into the popper business. With business associate and sometime employee Henry Lunn, Tony Perry is director of a company called AAA Packag-ing, which operates from a leased warehouse in Delta, protected by a folding security gate.

Perry is secretary of the com- Cany; Lunn is president, accord-ig to documents filed with the provincial Registrar of Companies. From its warehouse at 706 Derwent Way, AAA Packaging sells isobutyl nitrite to customers around the world. In some forms it is marketed and sold with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink warning that the contents are not meant for human consumption. The Z-Bcst adu warn, "the fumes should not be inhaled, lawyer ever called. High-profile Vancouver lawyer David Gibbons who counts among his clients ex-premier Glen Clark contacted the Sun to say he acts for Perry.

Gibbons declined to comment on the record about his client's business dealings. When Lunn declared bankruptcy in 1989, he signed a statement saying he worked as a warehouseman for a company called Johnson and Franklin. Corporate records show Tony Perry was president of Johnson and Franklin from the 1960s until the company was struck from the Registrar of Compa- nies for failing to issue an annual report in 1996. Johnson and Franklin was the company that Perry used to distribute his pornographic books, magazines and films, including kiddie porn. Lunn said in his bankruptcy documents that his net monthly take-home pay from Johnson and Franklin was $1,250.

Lunn i listed his birtbdate as Nov. 16, 1939, called himself "single" and listed the cause of his bank- ruptcy as "business losses," but did not elaborate. His only assets at the time were listed as $200 cash, furni- ture worth $350, jewellery worth $30 and a 1978 Honda worth $500. He owed anm unknown amount of back taxes to Revenue Canada, more than "i $22,000 to the Bank of Montre-1 al on Homer Street in Vancou- ft ver, and smaller debts to people i I throughout B.C. i -j One of his former creditors Art Reed of Prince George, is retired teacher who taught.

I high-school English. Reed, who' arrived in Prince George in hi 1966, said Lunn was then a pop-1' ular special-ed teacher who made a point of befriending 1 new arrivals. km; Reed said he pooled with Lunn in the late 1970s to request. U.S. investigators have since visited sex stores throughout the U.S.

looking for products from Perry and Luna Pfizer, the drug company that manufactures Viagra, sent a let- ter in May, 1998, to US. emer- gency physicians warning them that "the only contraindication for taking Viagra is the concomitant administration of an organic nitrate" that can cause "large and sudden drops in systemic blood pressure" that could lead to heart attacks. "Although we have not specifically studied this, we believe that nitrates that are inhaled for recreational use including amyl nitratenitrite or 'poppers' and others will have the same effect when combined with Viagra. As you probably know, these are often used during sexual activity and it is easily conceivable that a person would take Viagra, begin having sex and, at some point in the process, inhale one of these substances," the drug com pany warned. A Web site offering to resell poppers worldwide including AAA's product warns that people usine Viagra risk death if they also use poppers There is no such warning on the drugs sold by Tony Perry and Henry Luna The relationship between Perry and Lunn is unclear.

Neither nan has agreed to be interviewed. Contacted at his phone number, Lunn said: "I don't have anything to do with Tony Perry." Reminded that corporate records show Perry, with Lunn, is a director of AAA Packaging, Lunn said: "Yeah, I guess he could." Lunn refused to comment further, saying he would get a lawyer to answer questions. No agency reported. Documents filed in B.C. as collateral for lease agreements show AAA Packaging leases computer equipment, a walk-in cooler and a vacuum-filling system.

it is not apparent where Perry and Lunn get their isobutyl nitrite, but chemistry texts indicate it can be manufactured from some substances that are readily and legally available in Canada. The US. consumer protection agency collected and tested samples of poppers that were shipped by AAA Packaging and intercepted by U.S. Customs. As a result, Biden sent a letter Feb.

16, 1998 to all his US. VA A intht.