SENATE SOFTENS POT GROWERS BILL

OTTAWA (CNS) - The Liberal-dominated Senate has passed a scaled-back
version of a Conservative drug bill, sending it back to the House of
Commons for MPs to decide whether to reject the upper chamber's
amendment eliminating a requirement for pot growers to serve jail
time for cultivating as few as five plants.

Liberal senators, with the help of independents, voted to raise the
bar so that marijuana growers would have to be caught with at least
201 plants to garner the automatic jail term of six months.

Thecontroversialbillwouldremovediscretion for judges to impose
sentences as they see fit on a variety of drug-related crimes, adding
to more than two dozen mandatory minimum sentences that already exist
in the Criminal Code for such things as murder and gun-related crimes.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson blasted the Senate last week, saying
its amendments to his drug legislation "open the door to drug
traffickers and people in the grow-op business to continue to evade
prison time for their crimes."

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