SENATORS ALTER CRIME BILL TO GO EASIER ON POT GROWERS

OTTAWA - The Liberal-dominated Senate has watered down a Conservative
law-and-order bill by eliminating a requirement for marijuana growers
who cultivate as few as five plants to serve mandatory six-month jail
terms.

By a 49-43 margin, the upper chamber accepted a proposal from a Senate
committee on Wednesday to raise the bar to more than 201 plants,
rather than stick with the original number adopted by the House of
Commons earlier this year.

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

The controversial bill would remove discretion for judges to impose
sentences as they see fit, adding to more than two dozen mandatory
minimum sentences that already exist in the Criminal Code for such
things as murder and gunrelated crimes.

The Senate also amended the bill to stipulate that the special
circumstances of aboriginal offenders, who are over-represented in the
prison population, must be taken into account by judges when imposing
drug sentences.

Senator Joan Fraser, the head of the legal and constitutional affairs
committee, told the Senate during a debate on the proposed amendments
that many of the 62 witnesses who appeared at public hearings on the
bill said that the penalty for five pot plants was "excessively
severe" and that it could lead to over-incarceration of small-time
street dealers and growers.

"It is quite likely to be the amount one had for individual
consumption, not for trafficking," she said.

Police and the majority of the provinces, however, support the bill
that passed in the Commons in June, noted Conservative Senator John
Wallace, who said that raising the bar to more than 201 plants is too
lenient.

"Two hundred plants is a huge number," said Wallace. "This is a major
issue. On an annual basis, the wholesale value of that would be in the
$350,000 range. This is serious stuff."

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson blasted the Senate, saying their
amendments "open the door to drug traffickers and people in the growop
business to continue to evade prison time for their crimes."

Pamela Stephens, a spokesperson for Nicholson, said 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.

When Nicholson introduced his bill last February, he proposed
automatic jail terms for growing even one plant. The Commons justice
committee raised the number to five in the spring.

The bill has been widely lambasted by witnesses who appeared at public
hearings in the Senate and the House of Commons.

American critics warned minimum mandatory sentences for drug crimes
have flooded U.S. prisons in the last 25 years, with a
disproportionate effect on drug addicts, the poor, the young, blacks
and other minorities.

The Conservatives have defended their bill as a necessary tool to
fight organized crime by sending the message that drug criminals will
be treated harshly.

Opponents counter that the proposed legislation will fill jails with
drug addicts rather than drug kingpins, who will continue to thrive,
while small-time dealers are knocked out of commission.