POT POLICY IS SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Remember when Bill Clinton said he smoked marijuana but didn't
inhale?

As laughable as his explanation was, Prime Minister Paul Martin's
policies on marijuana are even less credible.

Politically, Martin is trying to inhale and exhale all at
once.

His pot plan is so conflicted, it sounds like he invented it when he
was not only stoned, but suffering from a lack of oxygen to the brain.
The policy is a classic example of a politician trying to suck and
blow at the same time.

On the one hand, appealing to public opinion that believes our
marijuana laws are too harsh, Martin, as did Jean Chretien before him,
plans to make smoking marijuana the equivalent of getting a speeding
ticket. For simple possession, people will pay a fine and have no
criminal record, which is what "decriminalization" means as opposed to
"legalization" -- no crime and no fine.

On the other hand, Martin has pledged to crack down on the tens of
thousands of grow operations in Canada, many run by thugs, gangs and
organized crime, without giving the police the necessary tools or
resources to do the job.

Further, he has not provided the political leadership needed to have
the public, Crown attorneys and ultimately the courts take the
increasingly dangerous nature of grow-ops seriously.

This brings us to the real lesson to be learned from the recent
tragedy in Alberta, where grow-op operator James Roszko gunned down
four unsuspecting Mounties before killing himself.

We now know the grow-op itself was peripheral to these events,
contrary to what the RCMP initially said. But the point is that Roszko
was precisely the kind of person often involved in grow-ops that
police forces have been warning us about for years.

Not some harmless Cheech and Chong type, but a dangerous criminal in
it for the money, with no qualms about using violence.

So what is the Liberals' biggest initiative to deter such criminals? A
meaningless promise to up the maximum sentence they can theoretically
face -- to 14 years from the present seven.

Maximum rarely imposed

This is a recipe for inaction. Judges rarely impose anywhere near the
maximum now. Most people convicted of operating grow-ops never serve
time in jail. In 2000, the average sentence served by the 225 people
in federal prisons convicted of pot cultivation was less than a year,
Maclean's reported last week. Sentences for importers and traffickers
weren't much better. Since judges decide sentences largely based on
precedent, doubling the maximum they can, in theory, impose is almost
meaningless.

The Liberals also say they'll require judges to give written reasons
if they don't hand out jail terms in some cases -- presumably major
ones. But so what? Judges give written reasons for their rulings all
the time. It's hard to believe being told to do so will change their
thinking in any significant way. All they'll have to do to justify
lighter sentences in future is point out that Parliament has now
decriminalized pot possession, suggesting society no longer considers
the issue as seriously as it once did.

Mandatory minimum sentences for grow op operators would be a slight
improvement, although given current sentencing patterns, whatever
"minimum" the law imposed (say, two years) would inevitably become the
maximum in most cases.

The only way to get judges to impose stiffer sentences on marijuana
growers over the long term would be for Martin to take real ownership
of this issue and convince the public, then the Crowns and through
them, judges, that grow-ops must be viewed as a far more serious
threat to public safety than they are now. This has been done in the
past to some extent for crimes like drunk driving and domestic assault.

No interest

The problem is that the Liberals, who are traditionally soft on all
crime, have shown no interest in taking charge of this issue. Chretien
even joked he might try pot one day, with his joint in one hand and
the money for the fine in the other. What a goof.

While I don't favour either decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana,
the choice the Liberals have made -- decriminalization -- is the worst
of the available options, because it means the police will still have
to divert scarce resources to catching casual users, as opposed to
concentrating on big growers.

Finally, the Liberals haven't even addressed the fact that no matter
what Canada does, grow-ops will continue to be hugely attractive to
criminals here because of the big profits to be made smuggling pot
into the U.S., which has no intention of easing its pot laws. The
Grits may not like the Americans, but ignoring them on this makes you
wonder what they're smoking.