CRACKING DOWN ON GROW-OPS

Minister to Consider Even Tougher Penalties in New Bill

OTTAWA -- Canada's public safety minister says she'll consider tougher
penalties for marijuana grow operations, but advocates of legalizing
the drug say the deaths of four RCMP officers could have been avoided.
Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan said she and Justice Minister
Irwin Cotler will review the proposed marijuana decriminalization bill.

The marijuana bill, reintroduced in November, will introduce softer
penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Possession of
up to 15 grams of pot would be punishable by a fine of $150 for adults
and $100 for minors.

However, penalties would be tougher for growers. Those caught with
more than three plants face up to five years in jail, or 18 months
plus a $25,000 fine. Anyone with more than 25 plants could face 10
years in jail, while the bill provides a maximum sentence of up to 14
years for operations with more than

50 plants.

"Clearly, Minister Cotler and I will want to take a look at whether we
have the right resources being used in the right ways and whether we
have the right laws," said McLellan. RCMP Commissioner Guiliano
Zaccardelli said police can always use more help to fight an
escalating battle against pot producers.

"The issue of grow ops is not a ma-and-pa industry as we've been
saying for a number of years. They are major, serious threats to our
society and they are major, serious threats to the men and women on
the front line who have to deal with them," he said.

"They are booby-trapped, they are high-risk issues and major,
organized crime in many cases is involved."

Nick Taylor, a former senator and one-time leader of the Liberals in
the province where the tragedy occurred, said the incident proves once
again that prohibition, whether for alcohol, tobacco or marijuana,
doesn't work.

"The way we've done it now is marijuana has become the exclusive
prerogative of the criminal element because there's such fantastic
profit in it," Taylor said in an interview. "I'm not saying that the
four men would be alive if we had legalized marijuana, but I suspect
they might be."

Neil Boyd, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University in
Burnaby, B.C. who specializes in drugs and violence, cautioned people
not to "draw too many inferences from this one horrific incident,"
because this type of violence couldn't have been expected, despite the
well-known risk of booby traps at some operations. "Most people
involved in the marijuana grow-op would never contemplate killing four
police officers or shooting at them. It doesn't advance their
interests. This is an abnormality," he said.

However, he admitted that the larger the clandestine operation and the
greater the profit at risk the higher the likelihood of violence. It's also
not unheard of to have people armed with knives, guns and baseball bats on
site to keep their illegal and lucrative product safe, said Boyd, whose 1991
book, High Society: Legal and Illegal Drugs in Canada, argued that Canada's
war on drugs wasn't working.

"We're in a kind of prohibition time frame much like (notorious
Chicago gangster) Al Capone and alcohol," he said, adding without a
regulatory system in place to deal with marijuana, there is a
potential for violence "at the margins."

The tragedy could have been avoided, said Jack Cole, executive
director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of 2,000
police officers, prosecutors, judges and other law enforcement
officers who lobby for a system of drug regulation rather than
prohibition.

"You can't imagine how many police officers have died in 30 years
trying to fight this war," said Cole, who was a detective lieutenant
for 26 years with the New Jersey State Police. For twelve of those
years, he worked as an undercover narcotics officer.