MISERY-DEALER NEEDS NO BREAK

If heroin trafficker Nicholas Cypui Chan can't get vegetarian meals in
prison, then Queen's Bench Justice Peter McIntyre should have ordered the
prison to supply the meals, not to release Chan before his term is up.

Chan, 27, was initially sentenced to 7 1/2 years for selling $7,000 worth
of heroin. After serving a little more than two years, he now can get out
in less than a year, with a paltry three years of probation substituting
for the remainder of the time he was to spend behind bars.

His vegetarianism was one reason for reducing his term; McIntyre also noted
that Chan had an "exceptionally hard time" in jail, including undergoing
strip searches, being forced to wear restrictive clothing, and being
subjected to a "long and difficult" trip to Peace River for a medical opinion.

Of course, Corrections officials don't perform strip searches or make an
inmate wear restrictive clothing just for a lark. They do it because the
inmate is behaving like one bad dude. Nor is it clear how a trip to Peace
River in a prison van counts as arduous enough that the prisoner deserves
to be compensated for it with a get-out-of-jail-free card. Surely, Chan
didn't jounce there in a Red River cart.

Heroin trafficking is a very serious offence because of the drug's
dangerously addictive nature and the potential for a trafficker to destroy
youthful lives through its commerce. Society must be protected from those
who deliberately seek to unravel its fabric.

Sadly, the only message this ruling sends is that the failure of the prison
system to provide an inmate with the lifestyle to which he'd like to become
accustomed takes precedence over deterrence, public safety and the gravity
of the crime. The justice system seems to have forgotten it is the
criminals who owe a debt to society, not the other way around.