Pubdate: Sat, 3 May 2008 Source: Peterborough Examiner, The (CN ON) Copyright: 2008 Osprey Media Group Inc. Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/4VLGnvUl Website: http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2616 Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n432/a14.html Author: Mark Cameron COURT SOFT ON DRUGS Re "Top court sniffs out breach" (April 26) Is it probable to assume that the Supreme Court of Canada is reasonable? Well not if you expect them to be on anyone's side in the war on drugs. The court has ruled that the use of a police dog is now considered to be an illegal search unless the dog's handler has "legal and probable" grounds to suspect that a person actually has drugs in their possession. Mind you if an officer had this probable grounds then police would not need a dog. It seems the court doesn't really want to take a bite out of crime. It's a person's right to walk around with as much illegal drugs as they can carry concealed, according to the court. A very reasonable judgment, if the court was run by a bunch of idiots. They certainly have me wondering. This now applies to many situations, like random school searches. As Peterborough police Chief Terry McLaren states, this is not a big part of the Peterborough K9 team's job. But it is a deterrent. Are we as a society serious about the war on drugs? Because that's exactly what it is, a war and currently the police are losing it through no fault of their own. Kids can now bring anything they want to school and store it in the school-owned locker. The police would need actual reasonable and probable grounds to search. I was surprised to read so many were in support of this (Have your say, April 28). In a war, one has to take sides, and in the war on drugs it's a no-brainer. One person interviewed for the Have Your Say feature even went so far as to offer his "reasonable and probable" opinion that "drugs" are no worse now in schools than when he went to high school. I went to school in the 1980s. It's much worse now; as a paramedic I know that to be a fact. We pick up all the overdosed kids. It's pretty bad out there, and the Peterborough area is getting worse by the day. It's time we send a message to our MPs. A properly trained dog is upwards of 95 per cent accurate at detecting even small amounts of specific drugs. The dog, unlike a human, doesn't care what you look like, what colour you are, how you talk, nor what social background you come from. It just plays the "find the drug" game and usually all it wants is a short play with its toy as a reward for a job well done. When our paramedic team was coming back from Cambodia last year the "fruit sniffing dog" at the Toronto airport caught two of our guys with oranges in their backpacks. We never thought to complain to the Supreme Court, though. I wish now we had, they might have given us our fruit back. MARK CAMERON RR 11, Peterborough - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake