IT'S SEVENTH HEAVEN FOR B.C. POT GROWERS: TOP COP

Jaws dropped at a Tory meeting in Fleetwood Thursday night when RCMP
Chief Supt. Bud Mercer told a crowd that marijuana grow operators in
B.C. are being convicted as many as seven times or more before seeing
the inside of a jail cell.

Despite the same-day news of a major terrorist plot being thwarted in
the U.K., the hot topic at the Surrey meeting, featuring federal
public safety and emergency preparedness minister Stockwell Day, was
Surrey's proliferation of marijuana growing operations.

Mercer referred to a recent report issued by the University of the
Fraser Valley's criminology department and the International Centre
for Urban Research Studies. The study indicates only 17 per cent of
offenders busted with 100 plants or less are sentenced to prison
after seven prior convictions, and then for only 4.8 months on
average. Of those busted with more than 100 plants, only 29 per cent
of offenders with seven convictions under their belt are sentenced to
prison, with the average sentence being 5.8 months.

The report also indicated that 49 per cent of B.C.'s convicted
marijuana grow operators would get five or more years in jail if
convicted in Washington State, which hardly has any grow-ops compared
to B.C. In B.C., only seven per cent of the prison sentences ordered
in connection with grow-ops are three months or more.

"We could put 200 more officers just doing grow-ops," Mercer said.
"If all the other things around it didn't change, it would just be a
cycle, it would just repeat itself."

Supt. Craig Callins, the officer in charge of Surrey RCMP's
plainclothes police, which includes the drug section, said 35
officers are on the city's drug squad and of those, seven are on the
marijuana grow-op team. "Is seven enough to take on 3,000 grow ops in
Surrey? No," Callins said.

Day told the crowd his government is not moving in the direction of
decriminalization and is working to get much tougher on grow
operators. "The federal Liberals have put in place over the years a
system that virtually guarantees that a lot of serious crime will not
be dealt with seriously," he told the Now. "We're beginning to change
that system. Serious crime deserves serious time."

On another topic, Fleetwood-Port Kells MP Nina Grewal said the
federal government is planning to raise the age of sexual consent
from 14 to 16. "It really broke my heart to think girls as young as
14 could be exploited by predatory adults," she said.