GROW OPS' DEADLY COST

Canada is only beginning to mourn the shocking slaying of four young
RCMP officers in a shootout at a suspected marijuana growing operation
in a rural community in Alberta.

It could easily have been in Coquitlam, where just last week a raid on
a townhouse complex turned up 28 grow ops. Or, Port Moody, where
several grow ops were busted on one suburban street. Or Port
Coquitlam. The truth is that newspapers, including this one, have so
many grow ops in their communities that they are no longer considered
news.

Last year, the RCMP busted 302 grow ops in Coquitlam and 82 in Port
Coquitlam. This year - and it's only March - RCMP have found another
42 grow ops.

The deaths in Alberta speak volumes about the dangers associated with
illicit drug use in this country. Marijuana growing operations are a
plague on society. They cost lives, many of them innocent victims
caught in the crossfire of a grow-rip, and some of them, we now sadly
know, police officers killed in the line of duty.

Grow ops cause fires, terrify neighbourhoods and cost taxpayers
millions of dollars.

Society must demand that the courts start getting tough on pot
growers. To date, they haven't. A report in the Vancouver Sun earlier
this year revealed that fewer than one in seven people convicted of
growing B.C. bud over the past two years actually went to jail.

The only message that statistic sends is that crime pays.