'TOUGH' LAW JUST ELECTION GRAB

Dear Editor,

Prior to the last election, Stephen Harper introduced legislation
which would give a six-month mandatory minimum sentence to anyone
caught growing even as little as one marijuana plant.

The opposition to mandatory minimum sentences from prosecutors,
defence attorneys, judges, criminologists, and virtually everybody who
has a working set of eyes from which to view the evidence is staggering.

The legislation died when the last election was called, but the Harper
government felt marijuana is such a problem that they must reintroduce
the bill, which has just recently passed successfully.

Mandatory minimums do not work as a deterrent, but more importantly,
they take away judicial discretion.

Bill C-15 would apply the same sentence to the medical user who cannot
successfully get a "medpot" licence and the large-scale grower for an
organized criminal organization. Both would get a mandatory minimum
sentence of six months in jail.

This takes small-scale growers out of the market, increasing and
protecting the monopoly that gangs have in the drug trade.

By introducing these "tough" sentences, we will see drug prices rise,
gang profits rise, turf wars increase, and more innocent bystanders
get shot, and the frightened public will call for more prisons, more
police, and more power for the government and law enforcement.

The Conservatives introduced the bill to appear "tough on crime." The
Liberals voted in lock step, because they do not want to go in to an
election looking "soft on crime."

When you go to the polls, remember that the Liberals exhibited the
same type of "facts optional" approach to policy as the Harper
Conservatives.

Travis Erbacher,
Langley