MarijuanaNews.com : The Agenda for the Prohibitionist Counterattack in Canada. Analysis by Richard Cowan

Posted June 19, 2002
Analysis by Richard Cowan

It is now possible to get a clear and complete picture of the prohibitionist
agenda in Canada as they move to perpetuate cannabis prohibition.

I have written recently about several of its elements.
See
Canadians Need to Examine
The Role of the Police In Maintaining Marijuana Prohibition. Paying For Lies
That Distort Public Policies and Undermine Sovereignty. Analysis by Richard
Cowan
and links.

Much of what I have described centers in British Columbia, and that remains
the subject of the much of the prohibitionist propaganda. The most recent
example of this is a “study” by Darryl Plecas, et al., criminologists at the
University-College of the Fraser Valley, near Vancouver. It was paid for by the
“E” Division of the RCMP, which is responsible for all of B.C. The RCMP got its
money’s worth. Or perhaps it did not.

Full Report see

http://www.icclr.law.ubc.ca/Publications/Reports/Grow.PDF

Executive Summary see

http://www.icclr.law.ubc.ca/Publications/Reports/Summary.PDF

There has certainly been lots of publicity. The study was reported in front
page articles in both Vancouver papers. See

Police powerless to stop marijuana boom in the Vancouver Sun

That article gave some of the details from the report’s analysis of
the police records on grow-op busts. That sort of analysis is fairly
straightforward — except for its assumption that those who have been arrested
are typical growers.

Actually, that is a dubious inference, because that is not necessarily the
case. The fact that those arrested often have extensive previous arrest records
is used to justify the claim that this is all about “organized crime.”

Plecas is quoted as saying, “People have a concept that
these are ma and pa operations. They’re anything but.”

However, in a subsequent statement the head of the Vancouver Vice and
Narcotics squad, who is NOT a prohibitionist party-liner, Kash Heed [Yes, that
is really his name.] said, “We are no longer going after
the commodity. We are actually going after the groups.”

In other words, the police are catching people in organized crime because
that is who they are targeting, not “ma and pa.” A truly competent criminologist
would understand that. But the fact that Plecas was hired for his ideological
commitment rather than his competence has become very clear.

There were two clues to this bias in the Sun article.

First, Plecas is quoted as saying “We’re Colombia North,” which is utter
nonsense. Contrary to prohibitionist propaganda BC is not a major supplier of
cannabis for DEAland.
See
The Drug Czar Harvests BC
Bud Propaganda Campaign At Canadian Border. The Jails Are Full, But He Likes
That.

And then he says, “Police must consider a more
strategic approach to dealing with the problem instead of concentrating on the
impact of other drugs such as cocaine. When marijuana becomes a commodity to
purchase cocaine then you would think there’s a reason to take another view of
it.”

I suppose Plecas has not heard of cash, the commodity most commonly used to
purchase cocaine. There is cocaine in BC because there is a demand for cocaine.
Most of it is imported directly from South America. Why would anyone want to
have to smuggle it into DEAland first and cross two borders?

The extent of Plecas’s commitment to the party line was much clearer in a
June 14th article in the Chilliwack Times. Chilliwack is a small town
east of Vancouver, near the DEAland border.

The Chilliwack Times is typical of many small town papers in its uncritical –
rah-rah – coverage of the war on cannabis. This one has it all; however it is
much less important than articles in major papers.
See
Canada’s National Post
Prints DEAland Prohibitionist Propaganda and Ignores Facts. Even
Anti-Prohibitionists Have No Standards When the Subject Is Cannabis. Analysis by
Richard Cowan

From The Chilliwack Times

editorial@chilliwacktimes.com

http://www.chilliwacktimes.com/
By Lisa Morry
June 14, 2002
See

The Royal Canadian
Marijuana Police and DARE: Selling a Big-Time Fraud in Small Town Canada.

POT GROWERS HAVE LITTLE TO FEAR IN B.C.

It’s No Surprise To Those Behind UCFV Study Why Chilliwack Has Become A Haven
For Drug Trade

One of the major reasons Chilliwack has become a marijuana grow op centre is
because criminals believe they can get away with it.

That’s according to Darryl Plecas, one of the co-authors of a groundbreaking
University College of the Fraser Valley study that tracks marijuana grow ops
busted by RCMP and police forces across B.C. That study found that Chilliwack is
the number two spot in the province for grow ops, relative to population, behind
Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, which has the dubious honour of first place.
In Canada, B.C. takes first place with 44 per cent of all
marijuana cultivation incidents reported to Statistics Canada by police during
2000.

The study found 177 marijuana cultivation files were opened at the Chilliwack
detachment in 2000-a 200 per cent increase in four years. That doesn’t include
all the grow ops that remain undetected, which Plecas estimates at four times
that number.

“Otherwise, why would anybody be in business if they were all getting busted?”
Plecas asked.

Not only are there more grow ops in Chilliwack than other communities, grow ops
here tend to be larger than others in the province and produce a higher yield
per crop, Plecas said.

“I guess they are good farmers out there,” he said.

Marijuana in “Columbia North” generally has seven times
higher THC content, the drug that gets people high, than marijuana did in the
60s and 70s.
(MarijuanaNews note: Party line. This one
statement shows that he is completely incompetent. There is NO DATA on THC from
the 60s.)
See
Potent Pot Myth Undermined
By Report From The Ultimate Authority. Cited By Swedish Prohibitionist Who Don’t
Seem To Understand. As Usual.
and links

“B.C. bud is considered to be the best in the
world,” Plecas said.
(MarijuanaNews note: At the risk of offending my
friends in BC, that is just BS Bud.)
See
Time Magazine Is
Improving On The Party Line On “B. C. Bud.” Now it averages 30% THC!

That is
really B. S. Bud!

That doesn’t mean we smoke all of it. The 1.2 million plants and 8,646
kilograms of harvested material police seized in four years between January 1997
and December 2000 would be more than the local population could possibly use.

What this indicates is organized criminal activity, Plecas
said, even though there is little evidence of trafficking activity-a fact that
Plecas said he finds odd.

“Throw the book at these people,” Plecas said. “That will
make it go away. That’s why there are no grows in Alberta or Whatcom County.
It’s pretty basic psychology. If somebody’s not being punished for a history of
bad behaviour, why wouldn’t it continue?”
(MarijuanaNews note: Completely incompetent? Or
completely dishonest?

No grows in Alberta? If he is going to play the party line game, he should do
some homework. Maybe if he read MarijuanaNews.com…
See

Edmonton Superweed Reefer Madness Embarrasses Justice Minister;
Local Paper Opposes Even Medical Marijuana
and links, especially,

Edmonton Police Actually Claim That Canadian Marijuana Is Being Exported To
Mexico
– If You Believe That…

While I doubt if there are many grow-ops in Whatcom county, which is just across
the BC border in Washington state, the fact that DEAland produces half the
cannabis it consumes, vastly more than is produced in Canada, proves that stiff
penalties do not prevent this “crime.”

If that worked, DEAland would indeed be “drug free” as various acts of
Congress have declared that it shall be – by dates long passed.

A generally prohibitionist CBC story on the Plecas study notes that B.C. Supreme Court Justice Wally Oppal says that stiffer
penalties do not necessarily reduce crime.

Oppal says, “All you have to do is
look at the United States which imposes large penalties and lengthy jail terms,
and we know they do not have the safest society.” Oppal said criminals generally
think they’re not going to get caught, and that they don’t check to see what
will happen if they do.

If you are a poor Vietnamese immigrant, you may not have any choice.

Generally speaking Canadian sentences for all crimes are much shorter than
those in DEAland. They more often follow the European pattern.
See
Poll Shows B.C.
Residents Reject DEAland Pressure To Increase Penalties on Marijuana Growing.

And could anyone really believe that increasing prison sentences will reduce
the role of organized crime. Just the opposite is likely to be true.)
See

Organized Crime In The Marijuana Trade.
Why More “Law Enforcement” is Counterproductive.
An Excellent Halifax Editorial Says, “Marijuana laws encourage crime.”

Part of the problem is that police forces are overwhelmed. Police are not
taking down grow ops proactively. They’re struggling to keep up to tips, he
said.

The trouble doesn’t stop there. The study found that the Crown stays 65 per cent
of charges on grow ops, plea bargaining both charges and suspects. Plecas said
he is not a fan of that philosophy, although he understands that the Crown’s
objective is a successful prosecution.

“The disturbing thing, I think is the whole sentencing. They get a slap on the
wrist despite the fact they have multiple convictions,” he said.

Growing pot is like having a licence to print money.
The average grow op busted has 192 plants ( 247 in Chilliwack ) at an estimated
value of $130,000 ( about 25 per cent more in Chilliwack ). That’s tax-free
money that is generated with very little investment in about three months.
Growers don’t even have to pay for electricity because they steal it.

“The penalties ought to outweigh the benefit,” Plecas
said.
(MarijuanaNews note: Could he tell us how much
pain he would like to inflict?)

Another surprising trend the UCFV study uncovered is that 50 per cent of the
suspects in Chilliwack grow ops ( fewer in other communities ) are Vietnamese.
They come here from Ontario at twice the rate of non-Vietnamese suspects, Plecas
said. Many have extensive criminal records, including violent offenses.
(MarijuanaNews note: The police seem to have had good luck
in infiltrating the Vietnamese organizations in Vancouver as well.)

“Obviously not all Vietnamese people are anywhere near this collection,”
Plecas said.

Now the purpose of this prohibitionist propaganda is to encourage both bigger
nark budgets and longer sentences. And to a degree it may be working. The
RCMP conned the Chilliwack city council into giving it C$160,000 in new funds to
hunt for grow-ops.

B.C. Solicitor General Rich Coleman has called for stiffer sentences for
growers, saying, “Frankly, I’ve not of the opinion that we should be soft in
this province on drugs…. We have to be tougher on this particular crime.”

The first problem with this is that Canadian criminal laws are set nationally
in Ottawa, not in the provinces. The second problem is that B.C. is suffering a
huge budget crunch and is closing courthouses and jails. And as noted, the
people of B.C. are generally not in favor of harsher sentences.

That, of course, is the reason for the prohibitionist propaganda, and it is a
national campaign. Ontario papers have been full of articles about the “danger”
of grow-ops.

An article in
Saturday’s
Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s two national papers, said that
“Police estimate there could be as many as 10,000 hydroponic marijuana labs
hidden in houses across Southern Ontario. With an average yield of about 1,200
plants a year, it’s a $12-billion industry, and the province’s most valuable
cash crop.” The C$1,000 per plant is roughly twice the value estimated by the
Plecas study, but — even so — that would be C$6 billion per year for Ontario,
which is Canada’s most populous province.

The propaganda campaign may be backfiring, however. The intention of the
study and some of the reports on it is clearly the usual media game of finding a
“problem” and demanding that the government “do something” about it. The dilemma
for the prohibitionists is that too many people have drawn the conclusion that
prohibition is the problem, and more of the same is not the solution.

But Canada cannot afford more bad laws. In fact, BC does not seem to be able
to afford even good laws. The province really needs its cannabis industry!

Even the Globe and Mail article went on to say, “A
major impediment to cracking down further on hydroponic labs is the lack of
police resources. It costs about $10,000 to $15,000 of police work to shut
down a single operation and drug squads in some regions are now discovering five
to 10 labs a week.

Others said they could stop even more if they had the time and money. Dr.
Stephen Easton, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, said trying to keep up
with the criminals doesn’t make sense.
See
Fraser
Institute — Libertarian Canadian Think-Tank Offers Our Neighbors Insight
On DEAland Marijuana Initiatives

While he said there are a number of political reasons why marijuana remains
an illegal substance, he argued that legalizing it would save taxpayers a lot of
trouble and earn the government hundreds of millions of dollars in lost income.

“On the economic side of things, it sure looks like a profitable thing to do,
so why would we throw it away into the hands of unsavoury criminals?”

Oops, that was not the intended message.

So here is the state of the prohibitionist counterattack in Canada.

The police continue to use taxpayer money to lie to the people. This
latest report is just part of a long series.
The gullible media – particularly in small towns, but also the major
papers – continue to play their part.
The substance of the campaign no longer centers on reefer madness, Plecas’
inexcusable references to potency notwithstanding, but on the “menace” of the
grow-ops and how big the industry is, organized crime, etc. This is simply the
extension of the long-standing practice of using the problems caused by
prohibition to justify more of the same.
Then there is the cocaine and guns connection. BC narks try very hard to
give the impression that there would be no coke or guns in Canada, if they
weren’t imported as barter in the marijuana trade.
The police and their political and media supporters will match any
concessions on the “decriminalization” of possession with demands for a
“crackdown” on growing, meaning both harsher punishments and bigger budgets.
Any “decriminalization” they agree to will be phony. First, it will be
left to the police to decide whether to bring charges leading to a fine or
jail. The fines will be so high that the poor cannot afford them, but they
will encourage more arrests for possession, treating the cannabis community as
a cash cow.
Collaborate with DEAland narks and then say that DEAland “won’t let
Canada” do anything else.
Continue to stall on medical cannabis.
When the forgoing makes matters worse, start again at number one and
repeat until no one is free.

Will it work for them? Probably not. Even this latest round of prohibitionist
propaganda was only partially successful. As noted, many observers concluded
that cannabis prohibition is futile. It is, but that is certainly not the best
reason for ending cannabis prohibition.

However, both the Canadian cannabis community and the Canadian media need to
do their jobs and alert the people of Canada to the threat to their freedom from
police lying.

That is an issue that should concern everyone, and when that is understood,
cannabis prohibition will end quickly.