Pubdate: Sun, 29 Feb 2004
Source: Langley Times (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 BC Newspaper Group and New Media Development
Contact:  http://www.langleytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1230
Author: Natasha Jones

PM 'SOFT ON DRUGS'

Randy White has accused Prime Minster Paul Martin of going soft on pot 
growers by reducing the fine and eliminating jail time for people who grow 
up to three plants.

White, Conservative Party MP for Langley-Abbotsford, berated Martin in the 
House of Commons on Monday.

"For months we have been told this legislation would be re-done and would 
address some of the concerns that we have heard from the provincial 
governments, police departments and groups such as MADD," White said.

"Instead we get the same old bill that was dumped on us by the former prime 
minister."

White noted that Martin pledged last year to strengthen Bill C-10, which 
amends the Controlled Substances Act with respect to possession and 
production of pot. It imposes fines instead of criminal conviction for 
simple possession of marijuana, but stiffer penalties for pot growers and 
repeat offenders.

The legislation proposes to reduce the fine for growing up to three plants 
from $5,000 and a sentence of up to 12 months in jail, to $500 fine and no 
prison time. This not only encourages marijuana use, the "slap on the 
wrist" extends to growing the weed, too, he said.

White said that the proposed legislation remains seriously flawed in a 
number of areas, including the absence of new provisions to help police 
crack down on grow houses.

Less than a year ago, Supt. Cliff MacDonald painted a grim picture of the 
drug trade in Langley, saying that the public, and the firefighters and 
police officers who protect them, are in the firing line of the burgeoning 
illegal marijuana production industry.

Addressing Township council last March, MacDonald said that the illicit 
drug trade is so profitable residents must realize that if there is a grow 
op in a house next to theirs, there is a good chance someone will be hurt. 
He recalled that in late 2002, grow ops were discovered in several houses 
in an upscale Murrayville subdivision. With one house looking very much 
like the one beside it, it would be easy for gangs or other rivals to 
mistake one for the other in an attack on a drug house, he said.

Earlier this month, Solicitor General Rich Coleman, the MLA for Fort 
Langley-Aldergrove, said that the import and export of illegal guns by 
organized crime groups in B.C. is only one aspect of an international 
network of violence funded by marijuana grow ops in the province.

Coleman said: "The upper level of organized crime feeds the money above and 
the crime below. And the money that feeds it all here in B.C. is 
marijuana." Coleman vowed to go after criminals' proceeds of crime.

But that element is missing from Bill C-10, White said. And nowhere is that 
more evident than in Langley where an illegal immigrant, already busted for 
growing pot, collects welfare while owning residential property in Langley, 
Aldergrove and Abbotsford.

"A lot of them (pot growers) are on welfare here, getting their money from 
pot. The proceeds of crime legislation has to step in and seize these 
assets if they are related to drugs," White said.

Property seizures have been limited to the apparatus used to grow drugs, he 
added. "They haven't seized a house."

Outside the House of Commons on Tuesday, White reminded Martin of his 
earlier pledge to add tougher provisions than had been proposed under the 
Chretien government.

"He just shrugged and smiled," White said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom