HARPER'S MISGUIDED WAR ON POT

We are glad to see the Conservative government using the excess
lifespan donated by Her Majesty's Opposition to get tough on crime.
But was it really necessary to include victimless acts among the list
of crimes being targeted?

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson's new package of mandatory sentences
for marijuana dealers, announced on Tuesday, seems to involve some
perverse incentives. Under the bill, a grower who is caught with
between one and 200 plants and is found to have the intention of
trafficking will receive a non-negotiable minimum of six months in
prison, unless he can show that he is eligible for judicially ordered
treatment under the auspices of a drug court. The maximum penalty for
having a few pot plants on the premises will be increased to 14 years.

Certainly, this will discourage some small-time growers from dealing
marijuana, since only a fraction of them now receive jail terms for a
first offence. But it's equally certain that it will encourage others
to reason that they might as well go to prison for 199 plants as for
five.

The government of British Columbia, which is where the effect of the
new sentencing guidelines is likely to hit hardest, doesn't think the
province is going to transform overnight into a utopia of temperance.
The provincial corrections department said on Wednesday that if Mr.
Nicholson's guidelines are enacted, it will probably have to find room
in its jails for about 700 more marijuana growers per year -- people
who are currently punished with house arrest or a fine. And nobody is
sure where these additional prisoners are going to be put, since 80%
of provincial prisoners in B.C. are already double-bunked and the rest
are either in protective custody or are too violent for a cellmate.

Of course, we would not want the lack of prison space in B.C. to
override what was an otherwise worthwhile federal policy that
contributed to the safety of our communities. Neither do we consider
that a rise in overall incarceration rates would necessarily be a bad
thing for Canada, even though liberal criminologists wring their hands
over how those rates reflect on our international prestige. But as
American "three strikes" laws have showed, mandatory sentences have an
unfortunate tendency to call the administration of justice into
disrepute when they are applied to non-violent criminals -- especially
those peddling a relatively harmless substance that millions of
peaceable Canadian adults experimented with in college, and might
still use once in a while to relax on the weekend.

There are serious criminal problems to be tackled in this country --
such as those involving gangs and guns. Compared to these, marijuana
is simply not on the risk radar screen. It is baffling that, at this
point in history, any government in Ottawa would bring an
American-style War on Drugs approach to Canada's small-scale marijuana
growers.