WEED OUT GROW-OP DANGERS

We all have cherished mementoes.

A photo from a family holiday, a child's first school project, or a
ticket stub to remind you of a memorable day in your past.

We all collect things to remind us of the moments in time we never
want to forget.

For most, those mementoes are stuffed safely in a box or drawer
somewhere in their homes - ready to be brought out at a moment's
notice to rekindle happy memories.

To strangers, these items would be worthless knickknacks, but for
those who possess them, they are invaluable treasures.

Victims of Calgary's Citadel fire know this all too well.

Within minutes of the start of a Dec. 5, 2009, blaze triggered by a
marijuana grow operation, several families lost a lifetime of
mementoes, and many narrowly escaped with their lives.

Now the man responsible for the raging inferno, Russell Hugh
McDougall, is wallowing in a federal penitentiary for allowing the
fire to start and then burn out of control.

But the question is, will McDougall's sentence - the equivalent of an
eight-year prison term - deter others from acting so callously, and
causing so much hardship to so many?

On any given day in Calgary, any neighbourhood is susceptible to the
greed behind those who set up grow-ops in homes.

From the Beltline to the far-flung reaches of suburban communities
such as Citadel, criminals use the cover of quiet residences to grow
a crop which carries a high profit along with its high risk.

McDougall was one such individual - someone willing to take the
chance that overloading electrical lines would be worth the cash
reward at the end.

Needing to create the heat necessary to cultivate a harvest through
artificial means, McDougall installed stadium lighting (designed, for
safety reasons, to be placed 40 feet above the ground) in his rental home.

As provincial court Judge Anne Brown noted in sentencing McDougall
three weeks ago, the operation was a disaster in waiting.

"Inevitably the electrical overload caused a fire to break out,"
Brown said, in granting the Crown's request for an eight-year term.

She said McDougall's crime was far more than the victimless offence
drug peddlers often see themselves as committing.

"This crime struck at the heart of community well-being," Brown said.

"A sentence is not to be vengeful, but is to reflect the harm done to
the fabric of our society," she said.

But for homeowners Brian Cripps and Ed Everest, Brown's words could
do little to heal the harm McDougall caused by his negligence in
turning his home into a powder keg.

Everest, who lost his residence and all of its contents, said while
Brown's sentence was "very reasonable" Parliament needs to create
stern sentences for marijuana grow operations.

"It's a scourge that gets into every community like a mould," Everest
said, following Brown's July 30, ruling.

"It ruins houses, it ruins neighbourhoods, it kills people," he said.

"It has to be taken out of our society ... we can't live in fear."

Cripps, who similarly had his home and contents razed to the ground,
said time will tell if McDougall's punishment goes far enough to act
as a deterrence.

"Our hope, of course is that ... he and others will think twice
before they engage in this," Cripps said.

Fortunately, in this instance, all that was lost was real estate and
priceless memories - instead of actual lives.

But like the inevitable death of Calgarian Keni Su'a, who on Jan. 1,
2009, became the first innocent bystander to be slain in this city's
ongoing gang wars, a grow-op related tragedy could be just around the corner.

Hopefully it won't come to that before the callous profiteers like
Russell McDougall realize the jeopardy they are creating for all Calgarians.