Pubdate: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2004 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Betsy Powell Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) POT BUSTS JUMP DESPITE DECRIMINALIZATION INTENT Increase Related To Arrests For Pot Possession Thunder Bay Is City With Most Drug Offences While Parliament flirted with decriminalizing marijuana in recent years, cannabis busts across the country have jumped to a 20-year high, Statistics Canada said yesterday. The increase was largely the result of an 80 per cent jump in the number of police arrests for cannabis possession from 1992 to 2002. The number of trafficking offences declined during that period, according to a report released by the government agency, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. Over-all in 2002, police laid 93,000 charges related to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Two-thirds of them were for possession, 22 per cent were for trafficking and the remainder were for offences involving importation and production. Three-quarters of drug charges were cannabis related - 72 per cent of them for possession, the report said. The age group charged most frequently were youths aged 18 to 24, followed by youths aged 12 to 17. There were more drug charges in British Columbia in 2002 than in any other province, almost double the national rate. Among cities, Thunder Bay had the highest rate of police-reported drug offences (571 per 100,000) compared to the Toronto Police Service rate of (211 per 100,000). Thunder Bay Police Chief Robert Herman said yesterday the rate of drug arrests in the Northern Ontario city of about 110,000 jumped dramatically during the 1990s after the force put more resources into drug enforcement efforts with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Ontario Provincial Police. "We do a lot of enforcement. .. (and) we do have a drug problem here like they do in many other communities," he said in a telephone interview. Despite registering the highest level of drug busts among Canadian cities, Herman said police in Thunder Bay - and all other jurisdictions - are just "scratching the surface" when it comes to the scope of the illegal drug trade. "We always know regardless of what we seize in quantity of drugs there is a lot more out there," he said. "My view is we need more education programs. We need more treatment programs. Unless you can get something where these people can go into treatment to break the cycle it's just endless and I don't think enforcement is the answer." Toronto lawyer Alan Young, a law professor, author and leading authority on drug prosecutions, said the police statistics crunched by the Centre for Justice Statistics highlight a discrepancy between public attitudes and policing priorities. "It's really doing a disservice to Canadians if these figures are representing a law enforcement priority in the last decade because this is not what Canadians seem to want and it's just inconsistent with the political discussion going on," he said. "Instead, they should be trying to figure out how to reallocate some of their money that relates to cannabis law enforcement to things that matter to Canadians, like sexual assault enforcement and robbery." Most troubling, he added, is that it seems that law enforcers appear to be targeting the users, not the suppliers, when "going after the users never does anything in terms of the supply issue." A ruling in December from the Supreme Court of Canada upheld current marijuana laws, but the Liberals under Prime Minister Paul Martin appear to be committed to partial decriminalization. In a year-end television interview shortly after the ruling was released, Martin repeated his intention to revive the decriminalization bill, first proposed under former prime minister Jean Chretien, that would lift criminal penalties for those caught with "a very small quantity" of pot - 15 grams or less. The law now provides up to six months in jail or fines of up to $1,000 on summary conviction. If the crown chooses to prosecute a pot possession charge as an indictable offence, a conviction could bring a jail term of up to seven years. Even the federal government has acknowledged that the law is unevenly enforced across the country. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin