DRUG TRADE AT HEART OF VIOLENCE

When it comes to cracking down on gang crime, two things are certain.
The Tories will continue ratcheting up penalties and our gun-happy,
drug-running thugs will carry on as usual.

Gang killings would bring automatic first-degree murder charges and
drive-by shootings -- whether anyone's hit or not -- would mean a
minimum four-year sentence under the proposed legislation.

Good luck with that. First, you've got to catch the gangsters
shooting at each other -- and that doesn't happen very often. Then
you've got to prove the killings are gang-related.

And guess what? The lowlifes whacking each other in the streets --
especially in B.C.'s Lower Mainland -- don't care what the law says.
They're just protecting their illicit business interests which make
them fabulously rich.

They care not a whit about the consequences of their actions --
whether moral or legal. If an innocent person gets caught in the fray
while bullets are flying around, it's considered a mere inconvenience.

Gang members don't ponder the prospect of 25 years behind bars -- as
opposed to 10 -- before eligibility for parole. They're too busy
trying to eliminate the competition.

Selling illicit drugs has always been so lucrative and the demand so
plentiful that the lure of big money overrules any other considerations.

Even if the cops do catch a few big fish in the drug trade and throw
them into the clink for a couple of decades, there will be other
thugs to take their places.

IMPOSSIBLE WAR

This impossible war on drugs has prompted both a prominent law
professor and the executive director of the John Howard Society of
Canada to join the growing list of groups and individuals clamouring
for a rethink.

"These proposed changes are totally absurd," says University of
Toronto criminal law professor Peter Rosenthal. "Nobody would give a
damn about the difference between second- and first-degree murder if
they're thinking of killing somebody."

It's time Ottawa ditched prohibition and regulated illicit drugs in
conjunction with education campaigns about the dangers of drugs, he says.

"If you want to deal with the drug problem ... education is much
better than prohibition, as was decided with respect to alcohol
generations ago."

Craig Jones, of the John Howard Society of Canada, also dismisses the
Tories' new anti-gang legislation and urges our politicians to wrench
the drug trade away from criminal gangs.

"We choose a form of management that delegates the production,
consumption and distribution of drugs to the contest between the cops
and organized crime and we say, 'you guys fight it out,' " he says in
frustration.

"It's highly dysfunctional and it brings with it a lot of violence."

He'd like to see drugs regulated and sold, with varying restrictions,
depending on their potential for harm.

CONSUMPTION ROOMS

Vancouver addictions expert Mark Haden, for instance, has proposed
that hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine be limited to supervised
consumption rooms. Less harmful drugs could be used at home. Drug
buyers could be registered and tracked.

"The greater evil is shooting it out in the streets between cops and
organized crime," says Jones. "What I'm trying to say to Canadians is
you can have prohibition but you can't have it for free. You must
take the violence."

Legalize drugs and watch murder, assaults and robberies plummet. Now
that's getting tough on crime.