SUDDENLY, THE FUN GOES OUT OF GROW-OPS

Last weekend many of us, I'd guess, raised our eyebrows a tad and had
a chuckle when it was revealed that more than half the townhouses in a
suburban Vancouver complex were grow-ops.

We saw the TV images of police hauling out the heat lamps and other
marijuana-growing paraphernalia and tried to figure out how this
collective of Cheech and Chong rogues had managed to go about their
business for so long.

Grow-ops, at least in this scenario, were described as mom-and-pop
operations, even if the moms and pops didn't fit the Norman Rockwell
ideal. None of these gathered around home-cooked apple pie on a
Saturday night, but had different recipes in mind.

The suburban townhouse grow-ops became a joke. In hindsight, a sick
joke.

Fast forward to Thursday. This time, the TV images we remember are
from the air, of a huge tarpaulin outside a large outbuilding on a
farm. Inside the building is a grow-op. Under the tarpaulin are dead
policemen.

No joke.

By Thursday afternoon we had discovered that four policemen had been
brutally gunned down as they investigated a situation that at least in
part involved a grow-op on a rural farm.

By Thursday night, we in the land of B.C. bud paid close attention as
the cops reminded us that in this province, the illegal marijuana
business is worth something like $7 billion, and that there are an
estimated 20,000 -- 20,000!!! -- illegal grow ops in B.C. There's
probably one down the street from you. Yikes, you may have one.

Police and politicians pointed out after the Alberta tragedy that most
of the grow-ops are run by organized crime, that the vast majority of
the crop heads south -- making it B.C.'s most lucrative export -- and
that many of the homes contain weapons, or are booby-trapped with
electrified door handles.

On our TV news shows, we have over the past few years run plenty of
images of grow-ops being busted. They make for good TV. The cops
kicking in the doors, hauling out the bad guys -- often in their
undershirts -- then pushing them into paddy wagons. The ritual removal
of heat lamps and marijuana plants. The show-and-tell of the insides
of the house, usually the basement, showing walls pulled apart and
other major structural damage.

By Friday morning, the grow-op debate turned to soft sentencing, with
judges defending themselves, saying they were only applying what
Ottawa had ordered: Jail sentences for marijuana growing were a last
resort, and only applied in instances where the perpetrators already
had lengthy records, or where arms were involved.

And herein lies the dilemma. The great drug divide. The Cheech and
Chong mentality, which believes that marijuana shouldn't be illegal,
which pushes hard for Da Kine cafes everywhere, which celebrates an
open drug culture, collides with the hard reality. Grow-ops are not,
for the most part, happy mom-and-pop operations, but big league, big
criminal, dangerous operations.

And at the heart of it all is big, big money.

In the middle of all this are the cops, having to kick in those doors
and now, as has become tragically clear, risking their safety.

I thought back Friday to all those old gangster movies where the cops
raided illegal stills in the U.S. deep south, and there were big
shoot-outs and bodies everywhere. Is that what we've now come to? Is
marijuana our new illegal hooch? Is this the next step in this whole
grow-op situation, where our police officers are going to risk their
safety trying to contain something that many don't believe should be
contained?

And maybe it's something that can't be contained. If there really are
20,000 illegal grow-ops in this province, how on earth are the police
even going to scratch the surface? How do we stop 20,000 becoming 40,000?

Okay, I'm willing to believe that a percentage of those grow-ops are
nickel-and-dime operations. But after Thursday, you and I -- and our
courts and politicians -- should be convinced that the vast majority
are serious, dangerous business.

The only good thing to come out of the Alberta tragedy is that the
debate over marijuana will now grow to a crescendo in this country.
It's about time. The situation is out of hand.

The debate is not about marijuana. It's about crime.

As the hang-'em-high MP Randy White rightly said Thursday, it's time
politicians across this land started concentrating on the crisis that
is drug-fuelled crime in this country, rather than on same-sex
marriage. I don't often agree with White, but on this one he's right.

The reality is that organized crime has become part of the fabric of
this land, and our wishy-washiness on grow-ops has allowed them to
take over our communities. And your neighbourhoods.

Why so many grow-ops here? Because south of the border, where the
demand is constant, they crack down on them with a collective iron
fist.

We're still, largely, in Cheech and Chong, laissez-faire, tuned-out
mode, here in lotus land. It's time, if you'll forgive the expression,
that we got off the pot. And started making it ugly, really ugly, for
the bad guys.