THIS PLAGUE IS LETHAL

HEADS ARE BOWED in Canada today, in mourning and in respect for four
young RCMP officers.

All were killed in the line of duty on Thursday, while investigating a
marijuana growing operation on a farm in Alberta.

It is the greatest loss of life the force has sustained at one time in
a century. Canada is sick about it. We should be.

When we lift our heads from mourning, we have a duty to use them to
deal with the underlying causes of this tragedy.

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli has bluntly identified what
should be the first priority.

The explosion of marijuana grow-ops is "a plague on our society now,"
he says.

He is right. And we can't pretend this plague is not lethal.

Police have been warning for years that grow-ops are not like the ma
and pa moonshiners of another age.

They are typically run by people with criminal records, often
involving violence.

Increasingly, operators are criminal gangs, running multiple sites,
selling pot to a lucrative U.S. market and importing cocaine to Canada
in return.

Police encounter booby-traps, weapons, even explosives when they raid
grow-ops. Sites are strung with unsafe electrical wiring used to steal
power that adds millions to the bills of honest customers.

Three-quarters of these powderkegs are suburban houses - bringing the
risk of gang-wars, violence and fire to our neighbourhoods.

Neighbours need to wake up and seriously fight back.

The federal government's marijuana bill does raise the maximum penalty
for grow-ops from seven to 14 years. Public Safety Minister Anne
McLellan says she will now consider whether the bill is tough enough
and whether police have the tools and resources needed to deal with
grow-ops.

But as police have argued, the problem is not maximum jail time; it is
no jail time.

In B.C., where pot growing generates billions of illicit dollars, only
one in seven convicted growers (one in 13 in Vancouver) serves any
time.

It's easy to fume at judges. But they are applying sentencing
guidelines Parliament wrote for them. And the Criminal Code has no
minimum sentence for this offence - something Conservative party
justice critic Vic Toews wants changed. He proposes a two-year minimum.

Whether this is the right minimum, grow-ops must be met with
sentencing practices - not just unapplied maximums - that are an
effective deterrent. If growers can get rich with little fear of
getting put away, the plague will continue to spread.

The pot bill's fines for simple possession of small quantities also
need a re-think. Fines instead of jail are appropriate for routine
offences that often reflect youthful lack of judgment. But fines of
$100 to $150 are trivial. They don't invite users to think about the
truth - that their petty offence provides the revenue for a dangerous,
violent criminal monopoly.

The pot bill leaves this monopoly in place. So MPs should ensure the
bill makes conducting this ugly business as difficult as possible and
doesn't hand it more revenue.

We owe this to our society and to four young men who just died
protecting it.