STRICTER DRUG LAWS CALLED MORE RISKY

Prohibition Causes Grow Ops, Many Say

Warnings Against Knee-Jerk Response

The slaying of four young RCMP officers in rural Alberta is being cited by
some as evidence of the dangers marijuana grow ops pose to the public and
police and has brought renewed calls for tougher laws and sentences.

But what makes grow ops dangerous are Canada's marijuana laws, say many
legal and narcotics experts who argue further "criminalization" would only
lead to more bloodshed. Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan has said she's
prepared to consider tougher penalties and noted legislation before
Parliament will require a judge to provide written reasons if he or she
decides not to hand out jail time to anyone convicted of running a grow op.

Federal legislation, reintroduced in November, recommends reducing
penalties for possession of small amounts of pot while providing harsher
sentences for marijuana growers. Anyone convicted of having more than 50
plants could be imprisoned up to 14 years.

Debate on Canada's marijuana laws has been renewed following the shooting
deaths of the RCMP officers near Rochfort Bridge, Alta., Thursday during an
investigation into stolen property and a marijuana grow op.

Lawyer Eugene Oscapella, former chairman of the Law Reform Commission of
Canada's drug policy group, calls Ottawa's "get tough stance" in the wake
of the Alberta tragedy "absurd."

"The whole reason grow ops exist is because of prohibition," Oscapella said
yesterday.

"This is very simple economics and it's really appalling that the
governments, not just this but the past governments, profess to have such a
sophisticated understanding of economics but can't seem to grasp the fact
that they've created this incredibly powerful, lucrative and violent black
market in Canada."

Tougher drug laws "actually are going to make it far more dangerous for the
beat cop," he said, because it is going to drive the trade "more and more
out of the hands of non-violent, ma-and-pa producers and into the hands of
organized crime," he said from Ottawa.

Oscapella and others caution that this week's violence is also an anomaly,
with the vast majority of indoor grow ops continuing to be run by small
operators for personal use.

A senior officer with the OPP's drug squad says that police rarely
encounter violence during grow-op busts, facing significant resistance at
only about two in every 800 search warrants they carry out.

But Det. Staff Sgt. Rick Barnum says that is due almost entirely to the
training of drug squad officers, who often storm the operations without any
warning to the growers.

But Barnum says that of more than 1,800 grow operation raids in Ontario
since 2002, some 1,975 weapons have been found.

"That's more than one per search warrant, and those weapons aren't there
for decorations," he says.

Barnum, however, says that relaxing marijuana laws will not help get rid of
the grow op plague, as much of the marijuana grown in them is destined for
lucrative, but illicit markets in the U.S.

Jack Cole, a former undercover narcotics agent from New Jersey, who now
heads the pro-legalization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP),
agrees the Alberta tragedy is likely a direct result of laws that make
marijuana's growth and use illegal.

"And creating rigid laws with stiffer penalties because of this situation
is a knee-jerk thing that policy makers (will likely) do because they don't
seem to know anything else," says Cole, "But when they do that it will only
make things worse... the harsher the penalties, the more likely it is that
(more) officers will be killed."

Cole, who worked 14 years undercover with the New Jersey State Police, says
his country's 35-year-old war on drugs and its 1920s alcohol prohibition
experience show restrictive policies make the use of banned substances more
pervasive and their distribution more lethal.

"What does prohibition of anything get us?

"Prohibiting drugs does not cause less people to use them; we know that,"
he says.

Indeed, Cole says, the U.S. war on drugs, declared by president Richard
Nixon in 1970, has coincided with an exponential increase in the number of
illegal drug users in America.

Federal U.S. data shows the number of people using illegal drugs grew from
about 4 million in the late 1960s to more than 37 million in 1999.

"As soon as we prohibit a drug we create an underground market for that
drug," Cole says. "And that underground market is instantly filled with
criminals."

With the "obscene" profits available to those selling the drugs, motivation
to protect their trade by any means possible becomes overwhelming, says
Cole. "I'll guarantee you that whole armies of police cannot arrest our way
out of this when there's such profits to be made," he says.

Prominent Toronto criminal lawyer Paul Copeland says current laws against
marijuana growers are "incredibly stupid" and that even more violence would
likely occur if they were actually toughened.