NOTHING BENIGN ABOUT GROW-OPS

Police Need the Proper Backing to Rein in a Billion-Dollar - and Illegal
-- Industry

Senior police officials have warned us repeatedly about how dangerous
those who run marijuana grow operations can be, and how risky it is
for police to approach them.

Sadly, it has taken the deaths of four RCMP officers at a grow-op near
Mayerthorpe, northwest of Edmonton, Thursday to provide us with
incontrovertible proof of that. No one can assume any longer that
cultivating marijuana is just some relatively harmless pursuit of
simple country folk, a cottage industry run by moms and pops or
confused pot-heads.

The gunman who slew those four officers with an assault rifle was
feared by his community. His father called him a "wicked devil." His
property had no-trespassing signs, metal spikes in the driveway,
attack dogs and guns.

He turned to marijuana and crime when he was 14. He'd been charged
with unlawful confinement, obstructing justice, assault with a weapon,
and had been jailed a few times. Other police officers were on their
way to look for stolen property on his place when the fatal shooting
started.

Unpleasant and dangerous as he was, it's not clear, that his was the
kind of grow operation police have been trying to warn us about -- the
multi-million-dollar industries run by bikers, Asian gangs and
organized crime syndicates.

Like that Alberta operation, B.C. grow-ops are well-protected: with
booby-traps rigged to electrical current and explosives, their
operators armed with guns and knives.

But cannabis cultivation is the mildest of their occupations --
they're far more dangerous in other ways. They don't grow cannabis
because they like pot, particularly. They grow it because it makes the
money that supports their other criminal activities.

Growers being apprehended in B.C. today have, on average according to
police, a 13-year criminal history and seven previous convictions, of
which 41 per cent are for crimes of violence. They're not only turning
up on the edges of small farming communities. Three-quarters of
grow-ops are in residential areas, subjecting neighbouring families to
the fallout from their turf wars, to home-invasions and health hazards.

We've been told that the cultivation of pot is worth $6 or $7 billion
in B.C. alone -- all of it, naturally, tax-free. Canadian-grown
marijuana is part of a brisk cross-border trade with the U.S. where
the product exported to us is cocaine. Fifty per cent of the pot
produced in B.C. goes south of the border.

This is what makes the predictable cry, after the Mayerthorpe
killings, for the legalization of marijuana so misguided. The thirst
for Canadian cannabis in the U.S. would still be there; the cross
- -border traffic in pot and cocaine might become even brisker.

The laundering of money to support other criminal pursuits would be
easier. It would be more difficult for police to penetrate the web of
criminal activity in this country.

In any case, we're not ready to give up on trying to combat a national
health risk that is at least as dangerous as cigarette-smoking. The
small step that the Liberal government proposes -- to remove criminal
sanctions for the possession of up to 15 grams of pot and substitute
fines of $100 or more -- recognizes that it's imbalanced to give a kid
a criminal record for having the stuff for his own use when the number
of pot-smokers in Canada has doubled in the past decade.

A survey in November by the advocacy group NORML indicated 57 per cent
of Canadians think there should be no penalty at all for possessing
small amounts of marijuana for personal use -- that simple possession
should be legalized, not just "decriminalized."

What happened in Mayerthorpe may well cool the government's enthusiasm
for its proposed legislation as it stands -- for the time being,
anyway. But how much dope Canadians can smoke within the law has
nothing to do with the illegal billion-dollar marijuana-growing
industry, which, as RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli says, is "a
plague on our society."

The Liberals' marijuana bill already contains stiffer penalties for
grow-operators, and Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan says that
because of the Mayerthorpe killings, the government might introduce
amendments to strengthen the ability of police to deal with grow-ops.

Zaccardelli says police have all the laws required -- but they also
need more money to hire and train cops.

Beyond that, courts must take this crime seriously. Police have been
frustrated by judges who throw out cases because the cops didn't knock
before going in. Courts also hand out sentences that are so light that
many grow operators will turn themselves in rather than resist arrest
because they know they'll be back in business in pretty short order.

They fear other criminals trying to steal their crops more than they
fear the police.

Liberal MP Dan McTeague says he'll be demanding minimum mandatory
sentences for convicted grow operators. Justice Minister Irwin Cotler
has opposed minimum sentences in other areas because courts tend to
make them maximum sentences.

In that case, they should be set higher. And if it causes the
criminals to resist arrest, cops will have to be more wary than they
were in Mayerthorpe.