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Posted By EDMONTON SUN

To toughen up criminal justice, the federal government has chosen to pursue mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers.

It's not only cowardly, following the ongoing and vapid assumption that any anti-drug policy will instantly garner wide public support; it also shows federal politicians to be dreadfully out of touch with the Canadian public.

Though the results of opinion surveys vary widely, few any more show a majority support for continuing or escalating the failed "war on drugs", which costs taxpayers billions--yes, billions--of enforcement dollars every year, but does absolutely nothing to lower availability or use.

In fact, as more than 70 major independent scientific studies since 1921 have conclusively demonstrated, attempting to "ban" drug consumption simply props up a major black market for Canada's criminal organizations, which make the majority of their profits off the outrageous market markups caused by the product being illegal.

Secondly, the proposed federal law comes as U. S. states are repealing mandatory minimum sentencing because it doesn't work. Canada's proposals aren't worded as broadly as U. S. initiatives, and therefore will at least avoid the pitfall of jailing for life anyone involved in the drug trade-- even if the crime was stealing a piece of pizza while holding drugs, as has happened in California.

Third, there are many areas of existing law that could be toughened up. Sentencing guidelines for manslaughter in Canada are so low that first-time offenders can now be out in as little as two years, with good behaviour. Victims' rights to involvement during the prosecution process lag behind where they should be, as do compensatory and counselling services for victims. Canada could also benefit from toughening provisions allowing the indefinite confinement of repeat child sex offenders, so that untreatable pedophiles can be weeded out of society and held until a cure is found.

Fourth, Canada's jails are beginning to mirror the overcrowded, ridiculous U. S. system, where mandatory minimums have made the supposedly most free country on earth also the one most likely to jail you, moreso even than places like China and North Korea, a system so expensive it was privatized out of necessity, not choice.

Mandatory minimums are cheap public gestures and will not help make Canadian streets safer. Legalizing, controlling content and distributing drugs in the same manner as alcohol would take profits away from criminals, so that they could instead be used for public benefit, including treating the small percentage that become addicted.

-Edmonton Sun

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Feature: In Bold Step Backward, Canadian House of Commons Passes Mandatory Minimum Drug Sentencing Bill
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Fri, 06/12/2009 - 11:08

    * C-15
    * drug ware chronicle

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #589, 6/12/09

Bowing to the wishes of Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper, Liberal Party Members of Parliament (MPs) joined Monday with Harper's Conservatives to pass the controversial C-15 mandatory minimum sentencing drug offense bill. The bill was opposed by MPs of the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Quebecois.

Monday's vote came only after NDP and Bloc MPs filibustered the bill last week. But when one NDP member could not make it to parliament, the filibuster collapsed, and the Liberal Party leadership joined with the Conservatives in forcing a successful vote.

It also came after committee hearings on C-15 in which 13 of 16 witnesses, including criminal justice, health, and harm reduction experts, testified against the bill. Among them was US Criminal Justice Policy Foundation head Eric Sterling, who drafted mandatory minimum legislation for Congress as House Judiciary Committee counsel in the 1980s and saw the flawed politics firsthand.

The bill next goes to the Canadian Senate. Unlike the US, Canadian senators are appointed, not elected, and the Canadian Senate typically -- but not always -- defers to the House. Observers hold out some hope that in this case, the Senate, which called for the legalization of marijuana in a 2002 report, will seek to block or amend the bill. The Senate could also effectively kill the bill by refusing to act on it before new elections are called.

Under the measure, mandatory minimum sentences would be enacted for a number of drug offenses, including an automatic six-month jail term for growing as few as five marijuana plants. Growing more than five plants would earn a mandatory minimum two-year sentence, and mandatory minimum sentences would also be in effect for other drugs, such as cocaine and methamphetamine.

The tough sentences are aimed at "serious drug traffickers, the people who are basically out to destroy our society," said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson in the run-up to passage of the bill. But critics charged the bill would end up targeting low-level first offenders and filling Canada's prisons with them.

"I think it is really bad news," MP Libby Davies (NDP-Vancouver East) told Vancouver's Cannabis Culture magazine. "The evidence shows very, very strongly -- overwhelmingly -- that mandatory minimum sentencing is not an effective policy when it comes to drug crime. My fear is that we are going to see more people in jail, and more people fighting charges because they know they will be facing a mandatory minimum sentence. That means more court time and more backlogs."

"Mid and upper-level traffickers will get no particular increase in punishment, because a major dealer would already get six months or a year for any kind of trafficking," said Vancouver marijuana activist and Cannabis Culture publisher Marc Emery. "What we're going to see is people who wouldn't normally go to jail, they're going to be the people affected. It's going to be largely young people in schoolyards -- because if you are dealing around a school, it's an enhanced penalty. The enhanced penalties of six months, a year, two years, are going to affect, almost exclusively, people under the age of 25."

"The criminal justice approach has not only failed to achieve its initial goal of lowering drug use and availability, it has exacerbated the problem," said Jacob Hunter, policy director of the newly formed Beyond Prohibition Foundation. "The committee was presented with more than 50 scientific studies that stated this unequivocally, but the Conservative Party ignored that evidence, talking instead about the victims of crime. It is obvious from the evidence that C-15 will increase the violence and crime on our streets, almost exclusively target low-level and addicted dealers, and do so at great cost to families and taxpayers. Instead of repeating the costly mistakes of the past, we ought to go in a new direction."

Liberal Party opposition could have blocked the bill, but the party instead supported it for political reasons, said Hunter. "The Liberals are afraid of losing votes in suburban and rural ridings and don't know how to counter accusations of being 'soft on crime,'" he said. "Most Liberals are aware of the evidence on C-15, and indeed there was apparently lively disagreement in caucus over support for the bill, but ultimately, the Liberal leadership opted to support the bill."

Hunter was hopeful, but not optimistic, that the Senate would act to block passage of C-15. "It's tough to know what will happen, with many Senators vowing to fight this bill as long as it takes, the Senate has rarely blocked a bill passed by the House of Commons," he said.

But at this point, decisive action -- or inaction -- in the Senate is all that stands between Canada and the embrace of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses. Too bad Canada's Conservatives, who are playing from an outdated US playbook, refuse to learn the lessons of the failures of such policies south of the border. And too bad the Liberals are so craven and cowed that they know better, but vote for such measures for the sake of political expediency.

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