SENATE WATERS DOWN MINIMUM-SENTENCE, POT-GROWING BILL

The Senate has watered down a proposed law-and-order bill by axing a
requirement that smalltime marijuana growers serve a mandatory minimum
six-month sentence.

Vancouver police Insp. Brad Desmarais said Wednesday that the
department can't support the Senate's amendments to the drug
legislation.

The law - controversial Bill C-15 - was designed to sentence growers
caught with as few as five pot plants to jail for a mandatory minimum
six-month sentence.

By a 49-43 margin, the Senate committee accepted a proposal Wednesday
to raise the bar to more than 201 plants, instead of the original proposal.

The amendment leaves sentencing of growers with five to 200 plants up
to the individual judge's discretion.

"I suspect if this amendment passes we will see even more manifestly
unsafe grows occurring," said Desmarais, leader of the VPD's drug and
anti-gang squad.

Desmarais said without minimum sentencing, criminals will see small
grow-ops with under 200 plants as a "commercially viable option"
because they will face less of a penalty.

A final Senate vote on the proposed legislation - which would impose
automatic prison and jail time for a variety of drug crimes - is
scheduled for today.

The drug bill had sailed through the Commons earlier this year after
the Liberals teamed up with the Conservatives to crack down on crime.

However, the Senate committee had warned this fall that it would not
rubber-stamp the legislation, which has drawn heavy criticism in
public hearings in both the Commons and the Senate.

Opponents warned the bill, if passed, would flood jails and imprison
drug addicts and young people rather than drug kingpins, who will
continue to thrive, while small-time dealers are knocked out of commission.

Pamela Stephens, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson,
said that permitting growers to escape jail time for cultivating more
than five plants could create "loopholes" that would allow large-scale
operations to thrive, such as enabling growers to have 50 plants in 10
places.