REMINDER FROM CHIEF: POT LAWS HAVEN'T CHANGED

Recent Court Decisions Have Had No Impact On Marijuana Possession Laws

Owen Sound police chief Tom Kaye has a warning for pot smokers -- the law
hasn't changed.

Although separate simple possession charges were recently tossed out of
Ontario courtrooms on a technicality, the law hasn't changed and marijuana
is still illegal, Kaye said.

Lawyers in Windsor and Toronto convinced judges hearing recent unrelated
cases that Ontario's marijuana laws are invalid because of an unresolved
appeal concerning medical use of the drug.

The federal justice department quickly appealed both the Windsor and
Toronto cases to quell any uncertainty about the law, Kaye said.

"It's still on the books and we will continue to arrest and charge and
prosecute anyone in this city who is caught in possession of marijuana,"
Kaye said Thursday.

The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, of which Kaye is the
president, is on the record as favouring decriminalizing marijuana law to
make simple possession of marijuana an automatic fine, rather than a
criminal charge.

That's because charges for small amounts of pot so often end in an absolute
or conditional discharge. Often people don't even pay a fine.

Fining people for simple possession, much like writing a speeding ticket,
would simplify the police role and save the expense of pushing criminal
charges through the court system, Kaye said.

"A set fine of $100 would be $100 more than most of them are paying now,"
he said.

But the "small amount" of pot the chiefs had in mind was about five grams,
or one or two marijuana cigarettes, not the 30 grams a Senate committee
recently suggested as the threshold.

That would be more than an ounce of the drug, enough to warrant charges for
possession with intent to traffick in marijuana, Kaye said.

"The debate is that the law doesn't exist for less than 30 grams, well
that's six times more than the amount we're talking about."