A traffic stop in Utah last month led Canadian and U.S. authorities to seize two helicopters and millions of dollars worth of drugs although they're certain that they've merely sideswiped a much larger drug operation.

Officials from both countries said during a news conference this morning that the investigation into what they've dubbed as "Operation Blade Runner" is continuing, although not smoothly. U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan said his office "is looking into" the recent suicide of one key suspect a helicopter pilot in the Spokane jail.

Since the Utah traffic stop on Feb. 21, nine people have been arrested in the U.S. and Canada, including the pilot. U.S. authorities say they seized the two choppers, about 600 pounds of "B.C. Bud" marijuana and nearly 170 pounds of cocaine. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police seized another 150 pounds of marijuana, 40,000 tablets of ecstasy and several firearms.

Sullivan said most of those arrested appear to be fairly low-level operators in a ring authorities believe may have been making weekly marijuana drops along the northern border, picking up cocaine for the return trip to Canada.

Nor, he acknowledged, is this group the only one carting drugs across the remote northern border. "Sadly, someone else will probably step in to take their place," he said. "This has been going on, and it will continue to go on."

Sullivan, who is expected to be replaced by an Obama appointee soon, was flanked by members of nearly a dozen law enforcement agencies involved in this investigation.

He used the opportunity to justify the tremendous resources that go into fighting the drug war, saying its ultimate goal is simple: use interdiction and arrests to drive the price of drugs so high that one day, demand will simply dry up.

"That may be pie in the sky ... but the fight is worth it," Sullivan said. "We have a duty to demand the reduction of the drug trade.".

And the most powerful weapon the U.S. has in that war, he said, are the drug-conspiracy prison sentences handed out in federal courts.

Which led Sullivan into another area that federal drug-enforcement officials rarely talk about: Canada's relatively lenient drug laws and short prison sentences for offenders.

"Personally, I wish they were longer," Sullivan said, saying he supported a move by Conservatives in Canada to strengthen the country's drug laws, including mandatory prison sentences for some offenses.

The case was broken when the Utah Highway Patrol in Salt Lake City stopped two men, Ross Legge and Leonard Ferris, in a car containing 83 kilograms of cocaine on Feb. 21.

Arnie Moorin, the special agent in charge of the Seattle office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the cocaine was to be traded for a load of marijuana that was set to land near the Pend Oreille County town of Ione on Feb 23. Agents set up on that delivery site, grounded the chopper and arrested the pilot, Samuel Lindsay-Brown, 24, of Revelstoke, B.C.

Lindsay-Brown hanged himself on Feb. 27 in the Spokane County Jail.

Sullivan said Lindsay-Brown was not only a suspect, but also a potential witness in the case who could have provided information about the operation.

"We have an interest in why this pilot killed himself," Sullivan said.

On March 5, using intelligence from the previous arrests, undercover agents lured another helicopter to a landing in Idaho, where it off-loaded 174 pounds of pot. The pilot was arrested.