GROW WATCH PLAN DRAWS FIRE

Re: Grow watch, June 3, 2005

First, the city removed the privacy rights of tenants, threatening
landlords with $10,000 fines if they didn't rifle through their
tenant's closets every 90 days. Now it wants to organize a police
state where neighbours are spying on each other. All this to
discourage the cultivation of marijuana.

Let s look at the statistics. There were 341 complaints of grow ops,
but only 101 search warrants were executed. The RCMP strike force SWAT
team only has resources to investigate one-third of the complaints it
gets and there is a three-month waiting list, but it is asking for
more tips offs.

Does the city and the RCMP expect private citizens to do their job for
them? The police arrive in force with high-powered weapons, body
armour and battering rams. Yet, as a landlord, I am expected to enter
alone and without arms. Now they want to legitimate vigilante squads.

(Grow op) often pose threats to public safety and agree often linked
to secondary crimes, often drive-by shootings, home invasions,
homicides and money laundering, to cross-border drug smuggling, fire,
gang activity and organized crime. Grow ops are dangerous only because
marijuana is banned. If it were legalized there would be no threat to
society. No one has been convicted of impaired driving, beat his wife,
or robbed a bank while under the influence of marijuana.

Let's get marijuana cultivation out of the attics and basements of
residential areas and into agricultural green houses. Let's take it
out of the hands of criminal gangs and turn it over to professional
horticulturists.

Clifford Roulston