POWER TOOLS

Movement against marijuana grow operations has been long on talk and short
on action for too many years. And perhaps it's one of the simple answers
that will pack the biggest punch.

With B.C. Hydro willing to shut off power to obviously illegal operations,
police have what could be a relatively safe and remarkably powerful tool
against a business that has been growing too quickly, at the expense of the
safety of entire neighbourhoods throughout the province and especially in
the Lower Mainland.

But the shocking deaths of four RCMP officers in Alberta are more than
enough of a reminder that law enforcement is never a completely safe
proposition. Care will have to be taken in the Surrey pilot project to
ensure that Hydro meter-readers don't face the same kinds of risks in their
day-to-day jobs that flak-jacketed police officers knowingly enter when they
bust a grow op.

After all, it wasn't the marijuana that killed those four police officers -
it was a gun-wielding madman whom the courts had ample opportunity to stop a
long time ago, when the damage he was doing was still just a harbinger of
what lay ahead.

Dimming the lights on marijuana grow ops is just one step towards solving
one problem. Next, the courts have to take crime seriously, and punish - or
rehabilitate, take your pick - criminals effectively.

Meanwhile, the federal government is going to have to decide just what
constitutes a crime in this country, and give the police and the courts
appropriate direction as to how to deal with it.

Just shutting off the electricity won't do it without some help from people
with power.