Pubdate: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 Source: Globe and Mail (Canada) Copyright: 2004, The Globe and Mail Company Contact: http://www.globeandmail.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168 Section: M 2 Author: John Barber Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) HOW TO STOP GROW-OPS? LEGALIZE POT At the time, you couldn't help but laugh at last month's big pot bust in Barrie. The size of the operation, its location (an abandoned brewery), its blatancy -- it was all too funny. It was as if Monty Python had descended from comedy heaven to demonstrate the absurdity of Canadian drug laws. Looking ahead, however, Ontarians may well remember the winter of 2004 as the last time any of them laughed about a marijuana grow operation. This week's news -- a bust in a postcard-perfect Toronto suburb, with plants strung across the living room, and six children, now in the care of the state, sleeping on bare, urine-soaked mattresses in the corner -- was not funny at all. Nor was it amusing to learn from police that such operations are becoming increasingly common. "Grow houses not only bring a dangerous criminal element into our community," York Regional Police Chief Armand La Barge said, "but the fact that children are being raised in this environment is a major concern." Two people have been murdered in connection with York Region grow-ops over the past two years, he added. Grow-ops in high-rise apartment buildings are the latest scourge south of Steeles Avenue, according to Toronto police. This week, Chief Julian Fantino highlighted the proliferation of marijuana grow-ops as a major pressure on the police budget. Toronto cops busted 33 of them in 2001, 81 in 2002 and 140 last year, according to the chief. So they are not only acutely dangerous to the people involved, who live under the constant threat of raids from gangsters who sniff them out before the cops do, grow-ops are also irrepressible. There is nothing funny about that combination of attributes; it is the birth of a serious social problem. But the saddest thing of all is the response from the governments that have the clear ability to head it off. Indeed, the latest legislation introduced by the Martin government is guaranteed to speed the crisis on. Justice Minister Irwin Cotler confirmed that when he re-introduced the Chretien government's retrograde anti-pot law last week. Although touted as a decriminalization initiative -- once it is passed, Canadians will be able to possess small amounts of pot without fear of a criminal record -- the real intent of the new law is to nail the growers, to "be tougher on large-scale grow-ops," according to the minister. Any scale grow-op, in fact. The new law will put people who grow as few as four plants in jail for five years. Under its terms, the Richmond Hill parents busted last week could go to jail for 15 years each. As marijuana activists are fond of pointing out, the maximum sentence for conspiring to commit terrorism in Canada is 10 years. Monty Python would have fun with a law that encourages consumption of a substance while redoubling penalties against those who supply it, but the judiciary is not necessarily amused. Last week, Mr. Justice Stephen Hunter of the Ontario Court of Justice in Belleville criticized decriminalization as "an inadequate compromise" that "gives all the wrong messages." "If you decriminalize it, who's going to supply the product?" the judge asked, pointing out the obvious contradiction in the upcoming law. Like a growing number of informed observers, he favours legalization. "If you legalized it and grew it and sold it as a product like alcohol, and regulated it and controlled it as much as you can, kept it out of schools, kept it out of people's hands who are under 19 -- as much as one can -- then you would probably be better off in the long run," he told the Belleville Intelligencer. That view will undoubtedly become more commonplace as underground grow houses proliferate and police bust down doors everywhere in their fruitless quest to suppress them. Late last year an Ottawa grower blew himself up trying to make marijuana oil. There were no children present, but more accidents and more violence seem inevitable, especially as the growers continue to decentralize and domesticate their operations in response to Ottawa's new law. It's unlikely, however, that the problem will have worsened sufficiently by next month, when the province hosts a so-called "summit" in Toronto to address the grow-op problem. Virtually all politicians seem to think that greater police power -- at ever-increasing cost to urban taxpayers -- is the answer. Last week Ontario Community Safety Minister Monte Kwinter declared himself to be "quite pleased at what the federal government is doing." If marijuana grow-ops must be suppressed -- and nobody, least of all proponents of legalization, wants the current situation to persist -- governments would be smarter to do it with their revenuers, not police. The job could be assigned to Integrated Proceeds of Crime (IPOC) units, with more private-sector investigators than detectives on board -- and broad powers to seize the assets of growers. The units would pay their own way and the police they free up would surely find more important work. The defence bar would go crazy at such a blatant revenue grab, but it would also get rich. (Canadian law allows defendants in such cases to pay attorney fees out of their seized assets.) But it would make for an interesting argument; at the very least it would nudge the current debate closer to reality. Even legalizers agree that pot must pay. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin