The Vancouver Police department is working overtime – not fighting crime, unfortunately – but doing their best to make sure Bill C-15 becomes Canadian law.
Mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana “crimes” means BIG money for the police/prison-industrial complex and these guys are really working hard for their next paycheques:
Vancouver police fear watering down of pot growing law
By Gerry Bellett, Vancouver SunA Senate amendment that would soften a bill designed to impose mandatory sentences on people illegally growing marijuana will likely result in the proliferation of smaller growing operations, says the head of the Vancouver police department’s anti-gang and drug section.
Insp. Brad Desmarais said the department opposes an amendment of Bill C-15 by the Senate’s committee on legal and constitutional affairs that removed the section imposing a minimum sentence of nine months on anyone found guilty of growing fewer than 200 plants. […]
Desmarais said the motive behind all illegal marijuana growing operations is profit.
“If they remove the minimum sentencing for grow ops under 200 plants then they will, without a doubt, create a huge industry where we will see a proliferation of grows with 199 plants because there will be less penalty,” he said.
“Criminals constantly operate on a cost/benefit analysis — 199 plants will still constitute a viable commercial option. I suspect if this amendment passes we will see even more manifestly unsafe grows occurring.
But it is not just the one article, it’s a Media Blitz! Here’s a similar piece published in the Globe & Mail yesterday. And check out this video from Global News.
Police departments and the RCMP have been using PR teams to shape public drug policy to their benefit for years – sending out press releases, holding news conferences and doing interviews with reporters who are too happy to publish their comments with little criticism or alternative viewpoint.
I like what Pot-TV’s Marijuana Man said his video Cops Selling Prohibition:
A bunch of C-grade students who couldn’t do anything but become a cop are telling us how we’re supposed to live our lives and what is right and wrong here. Totally insane, and completely beyond their scope.
Of course they want prohibition – they want the gang violence, they have to have this to expand their ranks, to get more big trucks, to get more big guns, more smashing machines.
