Pubdate: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB) Copyright: 2005 Winnipeg Free Press Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502 Authors: Jenni Lee Campbell and Neco Cockburn, CanWest News Service Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Rochfort+Bridge (Rochfort Bridge) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) CRACKING DOWN ON GROW-OPS Minister to Consider Even Tougher Penalties in New Bill OTTAWA -- Canada's public safety minister says she'll consider tougher penalties for marijuana grow operations, but advocates of legalizing the drug say the deaths of four RCMP officers could have been avoided. Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan said she and Justice Minister Irwin Cotler will review the proposed marijuana decriminalization bill. The marijuana bill, reintroduced in November, will introduce softer penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Possession of up to 15 grams of pot would be punishable by a fine of $150 for adults and $100 for minors. However, penalties would be tougher for growers. Those caught with more than three plants face up to five years in jail, or 18 months plus a $25,000 fine. Anyone with more than 25 plants could face 10 years in jail, while the bill provides a maximum sentence of up to 14 years for operations with more than 50 plants. "Clearly, Minister Cotler and I will want to take a look at whether we have the right resources being used in the right ways and whether we have the right laws," said McLellan. RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli said police can always use more help to fight an escalating battle against pot producers. "The issue of grow ops is not a ma-and-pa industry as we've been saying for a number of years. They are major, serious threats to our society and they are major, serious threats to the men and women on the front line who have to deal with them," he said. "They are booby-trapped, they are high-risk issues and major, organized crime in many cases is involved." Nick Taylor, a former senator and one-time leader of the Liberals in the province where the tragedy occurred, said the incident proves once again that prohibition, whether for alcohol, tobacco or marijuana, doesn't work. "The way we've done it now is marijuana has become the exclusive prerogative of the criminal element because there's such fantastic profit in it," Taylor said in an interview. "I'm not saying that the four men would be alive if we had legalized marijuana, but I suspect they might be." Neil Boyd, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. who specializes in drugs and violence, cautioned people not to "draw too many inferences from this one horrific incident," because this type of violence couldn't have been expected, despite the well-known risk of booby traps at some operations. "Most people involved in the marijuana grow-op would never contemplate killing four police officers or shooting at them. It doesn't advance their interests. This is an abnormality," he said. However, he admitted that the larger the clandestine operation and the greater the profit at risk the higher the likelihood of violence. It's also not unheard of to have people armed with knives, guns and baseball bats on site to keep their illegal and lucrative product safe, said Boyd, whose 1991 book, High Society: Legal and Illegal Drugs in Canada, argued that Canada's war on drugs wasn't working. "We're in a kind of prohibition time frame much like (notorious Chicago gangster) Al Capone and alcohol," he said, adding without a regulatory system in place to deal with marijuana, there is a potential for violence "at the margins." The tragedy could have been avoided, said Jack Cole, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of 2,000 police officers, prosecutors, judges and other law enforcement officers who lobby for a system of drug regulation rather than prohibition. "You can't imagine how many police officers have died in 30 years trying to fight this war," said Cole, who was a detective lieutenant for 26 years with the New Jersey State Police. For twelve of those years, he worked as an undercover narcotics officer. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake