PM 'SOFT ON DRUGS'

Randy White has accused Prime Minster Paul Martin of going soft on pot
growers by reducing the fine and eliminating jail time for people who grow
up to three plants.

White, Conservative Party MP for Langley-Abbotsford, berated Martin in the
House of Commons on Monday.

"For months we have been told this legislation would be re-done and would
address some of the concerns that we have heard from the provincial
governments, police departments and groups such as MADD," White said.

"Instead we get the same old bill that was dumped on us by the former prime
minister."

White noted that Martin pledged last year to strengthen Bill C-10, which
amends the Controlled Substances Act with respect to possession and
production of pot. It imposes fines instead of criminal conviction for
simple possession of marijuana, but stiffer penalties for pot growers and
repeat offenders.

The legislation proposes to reduce the fine for growing up to three plants
from $5,000 and a sentence of up to 12 months in jail, to $500 fine and no
prison time. This not only encourages marijuana use, the "slap on the
wrist" extends to growing the weed, too, he said.

White said that the proposed legislation remains seriously flawed in a
number of areas, including the absence of new provisions to help police
crack down on grow houses.

Less than a year ago, Supt. Cliff MacDonald painted a grim picture of the
drug trade in Langley, saying that the public, and the firefighters and
police officers who protect them, are in the firing line of the burgeoning
illegal marijuana production industry.

Addressing Township council last March, MacDonald said that the illicit
drug trade is so profitable residents must realize that if there is a grow
op in a house next to theirs, there is a good chance someone will be hurt.
He recalled that in late 2002, grow ops were discovered in several houses
in an upscale Murrayville subdivision. With one house looking very much
like the one beside it, it would be easy for gangs or other rivals to
mistake one for the other in an attack on a drug house, he said.

Earlier this month, Solicitor General Rich Coleman, the MLA for Fort
Langley-Aldergrove, said that the import and export of illegal guns by
organized crime groups in B.C. is only one aspect of an international
network of violence funded by marijuana grow ops in the province.

Coleman said: "The upper level of organized crime feeds the money above and
the crime below. And the money that feeds it all here in B.C. is
marijuana." Coleman vowed to go after criminals' proceeds of crime.

But that element is missing from Bill C-10, White said. And nowhere is that
more evident than in Langley where an illegal immigrant, already busted for
growing pot, collects welfare while owning residential property in Langley,
Aldergrove and Abbotsford.

"A lot of them (pot growers) are on welfare here, getting their money from
pot. The proceeds of crime legislation has to step in and seize these
assets if they are related to drugs," White said.

Property seizures have been limited to the apparatus used to grow drugs, he
added. "They haven't seized a house."

Outside the House of Commons on Tuesday, White reminded Martin of his
earlier pledge to add tougher provisions than had been proposed under the
Chretien government.

"He just shrugged and smiled," White said.