CRIME: POT PRODUCTION ANGERS SOLGEN

Rich Coleman said the statistics uncovered by a UCFV-RCMP investigation
into marijuana growing are too high.

A 222 per cent increase in marijuana grow operations in B.C. over the past
four years is far too much, said B.C. Solicitor General Rich Coleman.

On Thursday, the RCMP released a University-College of the Fraser Valley
study which showed that grow operations across B.C. are out of control and
almost impossible for police to stop.

"We're Colombia North," Darryl Plecas, the UCFV criminologist who wrote the
report, told The Advance News's sister paper, The Vancouver Sun. "In most
cases, it's not that these grow ops are found as part of a police
investigation. Usually, it's just police responding to public complaints."

Plecas said the RCMP's own investigations only shut down about five per
cent of grow ops.

"I'm shocked by the sheer volume of operations," Plecas said. "The volume
is so great, it's extremely difficult for police to keep up."

Plecas reviewed 12,000 pot cases investigated by police in every B.C. RCMP
detachment and municipal police force between 1997 and 2000.

During that time, police seized 1.2 million plants and 8,646 kilograms of
harvested marijuana, with an estimated value of between $462 million and
$1.25 billion, the study said.

Coleman, the MLA for Fort Langley-Aldergrove, said the numbers are staggering.

"I'm not happy about it," Coleman told The Advance News Thursday. "I know
the difficulty the police have experienced with grow operations. . .
they're doing the best job they can do with the tools we have given them."

Coleman said he wants stronger penalties for grow operators, and a faster
system for getting warrants issued.

"There's too much manpower waiting for an operation while the paperwork is
being done," said Coleman. "We have to be tougher on this particular crime."

"The growth has been so great, so fast, that they've been unable to respond
to the extent that they might have liked to," Plecas said. "In 2000, there
were 23 per cent of cases that they couldn't take action on; they just
couldn't get to them."