MANDATORY TERMS IN WORKS FOR TRAFFICKING

Bill Also Targets Drug Growers. Newest Stage In Tories' Crime Crackdown

The Conservative government unveiled historic legislation yesterday
to create the first mandatory prison terms in Canada for people
convicted of trafficking illicit drugs.

The proposed changes are the newest chapter in the Harper
government's sweeping crackdown on crime, which includes bills before
Parliament to toughen rules for repeat violent offenders, and to keep
accused young offenders in jail before their trials.

Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act currently contains no
mandatory prison sentences for anyone convicted under the act.

Judges use their own discretion about whether to send drug pushers
and growers to prison.

However, the new bill proposes to make mandatory: a one-year prison
term for dealing drugs while using a weapon, or for dealing drugs in
support of organized crime; a two-year prison term for dealing
cocaine, heroin or methamphetamines to young people, or for dealing
them near a school or any place young people are known to frequent; a
six-month prison sentence for growing as little as one marijuana
plant, for the purposes of trafficking; a two-year prison term for
running a marijuana grow operation of at least 500 plants; a doubling
of the maximum prison term for cannabis production from seven to 14 years.

The Conservatives are also proposing to allow judges to exempt
certain offenders from mandatory prison terms, on condition that they
complete drug-treatment court programs.

Drug-treatment courts are designed to help non-violent offenders who
have trafficked in small amounts of drugs in order to support their
addictions overcome their drug habits.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said yesterday the changes in the
sentencing provisions are designed to target people the government
considers at the root of the drug-supply problem: large-scale growers
and traffickers, organized crime groups that finance their operations
through drugs, and people who push drugs on children and teenagers.

"We've made it very clear that those individuals who are in the
business of exploiting other people through organized crime and other
aggravating factors - through this bill, we want to get serious with
those individuals and send the right message to them ... you will be
doing jail time," he said. "We want to put organized crime out of
business in this country." But one expert says the changes will only
help organized crime groups do more business in Canada.

"Tougher penalties for people who produce and traffic drugs will only
scare the ma-and-pa producers, and organized crime will fill the
gap," said Eugene Oscapella, a criminal lawyer who teaches drug
policy at the University of Ottawa and once advised the Law Reform
Commission of Canada on the issue.

"Organized crime doesn't care about the law. With these changes, this
government is doing a service for organized crime." Oscapella says
decades of experience with tough, mandatory penalties in the United
States have proven that the threat of prison terms doesn't deter drug
traffickers or growers, just as similar policies never deterred
organized criminals and illegal bootleggers during the U.S.
prohibition on alcohol.

"All we need to do is look south to the U.S. to see that mandatory
minimum sentences don't work," he said. "This is insane; it baffles
me. I can't believe that a man as intelligent as Stephen Harper, who
understand economics, cannot understand the economics of
prohibition." But Nicholson says the criminal production of drugs has
increased and the federal government needs to respond.

"Drug trafficking, grow-ops, a whole host of activities, have become
much worse in recent years, so we've got to stay up to date with the
laws of this country," he said. "I think this is a measured,
reasonable response to the challenges we face.

"I just want to catch up with the bad guys."