TOUGHER LAWS AND STRICTER ENFORCEMENT NEEDED TO STOP GROW-OPS

There has been remarkable agreement this week among law enforcement
officers and law-makers in the provincial and federal governments about the
gravity of the problem of marijuana-growing operations in Canada.

Federal Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan called grow-ops "one of the
single biggest problems we face in our communities ... a serious threat to
public safety."

British Columbia Solicitor General Rich Coleman, who is responsible for
policing in the province, demanded that the feds "wake up" and enact
stiffer penalties for marijuana growers.

RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli said they are "major, serious
threats to our society."

But a report obtained by The Vancouver Sun this week shows that their
actions over the past several years have not matched the strong words
issued in the wake of the tragic death of four RCMP officers in Alberta.

Despite a tripling of growing operations discovered by or reported to
police between 1997 and 2003, fewer suspects are being apprehended, fewer
charges are being laid, fewer yet are approved by prosecutors and growers
who do get hauled off to court can expect more lenient sentences.

In some jurisdictions, according to the report's author, Darryl Plecas, a
criminologist at University College of the Fraser Valley, police have all
but given up on trying to put marijuana growers behind bars.

Our editorials have argued over the past several days for a new approach to
the regulation of marijuana. But anything short of legalization, which
could be years away, leaves us with the necessity of tackling what
everybody recognizes as the scourge of the criminal cultivation and
trafficking of marijuana.

It now seems clear that the deaths of the RCMP officers in Alberta were
only minimally connected to the growing of marijuana. But they are a
reminder that marijuana cultivation is carried out in a criminal context.
The report obtained by The Sun, which looked at every report of marijuana
cultivation handled by police in B.C., found that 41 per cent of suspects
identified in connection with grow-ops had a previous conviction for a
violent offence.

We must get serious about treating these operations as the menace that they
are.

That means first getting all of the actors -- the police, the courts and
the politicians -- on the same page instead of squabbling about who is to
blame for the current crisis.

The statistics show that police, despite the way they describe grow-ops,
are not putting as much effort into shutting them down and punishing
operators as they used to. This might be in part because of the way courts
have dealt with the cases brought before them.

The number of cases resulting in prison sentences fell from 19 per cent to
10 per cent between 1997 and 2003, while the number of conditional
sentences increased threefold.

Carol Baird Ellan, the chief judge of the B.C. Provincial Court, said
earlier this week that if police and politicians are unhappy with the
sentences being handed down, they should change the law. Changes made to
the Criminal Code in 1996 and later rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada
dictate that imprisonment should be a last resort.

Her arguments put the ball back in Ottawa's court on the issue of whether
the courts are too lenient. McLellan has said the feds are willing to
consider stiffer sentences and there is little doubt there would be strong
public support for such a move.