December 18, 2010 – Major players in the legal system are calling Canada’s Bill S-10 inhumane and unjust, and with good reason. The bill would amend Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act with mandatory minimum sentences for pot offenses and increase the maximum, in some cases, to life behind bars.

Most media have focused on the fact that Bill S-10 would throw growers in jail for six months for a measly five plants. Yet there are far worse consequences for pot lovers in the bill’s frightening amendments, including a complete overhaul of Canada’s criminal justice system, jails, and ultimately our freedom-loving culture.

Although the Canadian Senate is still debating the bill, it is now dominated by Conservative members. So it is likely that the bill will pass in the Senate and be sent to the House of Commons for readings, debate and a final vote. Time is running short for Canadians to take action and voice their concerns.

You could be in jail for LIFE!

A read of Bill S-10 reveals that members of Canada’s cannabis culture will be jailed for a minimum of one year, and possibly for life if you are caught:

• Trafficking for the benefit of a criminal organization, which could conceivably include passing a joint, a seemingly innocent behaviour for which Marc Emery was charged with trafficking a few years back. Now if you happen to pass that joint to a biker, you could be in jail for life!
Advertisement

• Carrying a weapon while selling your favourite plant, which might conceivable include a stick, or even the kind of personal mace that women use to protect themselves from rape.

• Dealing with a drug record from anytime in the past ten years.

The sentence goes up to a minimum two years to life for dealing near a school or involving, in any way, a person under 18. This might mean you got busted driving your kid to school with a couple of weighed-out baggies.

Meanwhile, cannaphiles caught with even a mom-and-pop style operation could face mandatory minimum three-year sentences, since that’s the punishment, under Bill S-10, for more than five-hundred plants grown “for the purposes of trafficking”. Since, in the past, the courts have counted clones as full plants, a two-hundred-and-fifty plant sea-of-green operation with two-hundred-and-fifty clones sitting ready for the next crop would bust the five-hundred plant threshold. A judge couldn’t choose to sentence you to less.

Inhumane and Unjust

With such heinous new laws on the horizon, it is no surprise that major players in the criminal justice system are speaking out against it, including the Canadian Bar Association and the John Howard Society.

The John Howard Society was originally founded in British Columbia in 1931, and was named in honour of a prison reformer who lived in the 1700’s, and who sought to stop the abuse, torture and needless deaths of prisoners in Europe.

The John Howard Society has presented extensive briefs urging parliament to drop Bill S-10. When the bill was originally introduced in 2009 the society’s paper – titled “Ineffective, Unjust and Inhumane: Mandatory Prison Sentences for Drug Offences” – asserted that:

“Mandatory minimum sentences, particularly when they involve long periods of incarceration are incompatible with the Fundamental Principle of Sentencing … specifically that the sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender… as such they are liable to give rise to inhumane sentences…”

The paper went on to also explain that, according to Canadian principles of sentencing, enshrined in our criminal code, courts are obliged to explore, “…all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances …”

Bill S-10 clearly does not explore all available alternatives to imprisonment.

The Canadian Bar Association agrees

According to the Canadian Bar Association, which represents lawyers and judges across Canada, Bill S-10’s mandatory minimum sentences “…would not be an effective deterrent to crime”, the sentences would be “unjust and disproportionate”, and ultimately the new law “would not achieve its intended goal of greater public safety.”

Specifically, the Canadian Bar Association warned the senate that the provisions of Bill S-10 “…subvert important aspects of Canada’s sentencing regime, including principles of proportionality and individualization and reliance on judges to impose a just sentence after hearing all the facts in the individual case.”

Under Bill S-10, judges are stripped of their power to make a compassionate ruling.

US-Style Drug War

In the US, mandatory minimums and three-strikes laws have sent prison populations skyrocketing. In 2008, over 7.3 million people were in jail or on probation in the US, higher than any other nation in the world. The massive rise in US imprisonment began at the same time as former US President Reagan’s war on drugs.

The cost of housing millions of prisoners has sucked the US public well dry, resulting in cuts to education and other social programs. Prisons have faced wide-scale privatization, and frequently they turn a profit by paying prisoners pennies to work on assembly lines behind bars. Major corporations benefit from prison labour, and some have even closed their regular plants to avail themselves of a less costly work force. As a result, communities have been devastated (See “US Prison Empire”, CC #30).

The ultimate outcome is a circle of prison-feudalism. Some people, desperate and out of work, turn to crime: sometimes even to benevolent so-called “crime” like growing and selling a little pot. If caught, they are thrown in prison and work on assembly lines that take jobs from people in thriving communities.

The NDP is on our side

In a letter released to Cannabis Culture by BC Southern Interior NDP MP Alex Atamanenko, the MP is clear that the NDP are trying to defeat Bill S-10.

“My colleagues and I voted a resounding NO when this Bill was introduced in the House as Bill C-15, but it was passed with the support of the Liberal Party. Now we have a second chance to stop this wrong-headed and costly legislation.”

Our second chance, as Canadians, is to make the choice to pick up the phone and call our MP’s. Obvious targets are Liberal MP’s, who we want to impress with our calm but determined opinions against Bill S-10. Since Canada currently has a minority government, if the NDP and Liberals vote together against this bill, it could be stopped.

We might also call the NDP and ask them to stay strong in voting against this bill, or we might call the conservatives and ask them to reconsider. The important thing is to pick up the phone and make the call to stop a US-style drug war on Canadian soil.

Sentences for Growing Pot under Bill S-10

• Six months to 14 years if the number of plants is between 5 and 200.

• Nine months to 14 years for 5 to 200 plants, grown for the purpose of trafficking.

• One to 14 years for 200 to 500 plants.

• Eighteen months to 14 years for 200 to 500 plants, grown for the purpose of trafficking.

• Two to 14 years for 500 or more plants.

• Three to 14 years if for 500 or more plants, grown for the purpose of trafficking.

———————————————————————————-

YOU CAN HELP STOP S-10 FROM BECOMING CANADIAN LAW

Please contact your Senator and Member of Parliament and tell them to VOTE NO on Bill S-10. No mandatory minimums for marijuana!

Find a link to your Senator’s contact info on this list – or call them all!

Find your Member of Parliament’s contact info on this list or search with your Postal Code.

Let the Liberal Party know you are against this bill – call Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff: (613) 995-9364

Sign up at WhyProhibition.ca to get involved in marijuana activism online and receive regular updates about S-10 and protest actions in your area.

Source.

April 14, 2010 – Tennessee legislation legalizing the medical use of marijuana by qualified patients was considered by the House Health and Human Resources Committee on Tuesday.

But the legislation’s projected price tag during tight budget times — and not moral or legal considerations — could bring it down.

After the committee heard testimony, the bill was deferred for one week at the request of its sponsor, state Rep. Jeanne Richardson, D-Memphis.

She insisted the legislation was all about compassion.

“It is really up to everyone to know this is no longer a fringe issue…” Richardson said while presenting the bill. “Cheech and Chong smoking a bong. … That is not the issue here. … We will eventually pass this bill.”

She said polls are showing 81 percent support for medical marijuana.

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, making that state the first in the union to allow for the medical use of marijuana. Since then, 14 more states have enacted similar laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

Still, at the federal level, marijuana remains classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, making distribution of marijuana a federal offense.

However, in October 2009, the NCSL said President Barack Obama’s administration sent a memo to federal prosecutors encouraging them not to prosecute people who distribute marijuana for medical purposes in accordance with state laws.

Medical marijuana advocate Bernie Ellis testified the American Medical Association urged a re-evaluation of that Schedule I classification last year.

Under the Tennessee bill, those medically eligible to use marijuana would include cancer and Alzheimer’s patients, HIV and hepatitis C patients, people with chronic pain, and anyone having a medical condition resulting in hospice enrollment.

“We want cannabis available to very ill Tennesseans. … It should be allowed for use for very serious conditions…” said Ellis, who crafted the legislation. “There are 300,000 sick Tennesseans who would thank you (if the legislation passes).”

The bill would also establish a program to allow a patient to receive a prescription for medical marijuana from a practitioner, and the patient would need a program identification card from the Department of Health.

Participating pharmacies would distribute medical marijuana, and the cost to the patient would be about $60 an ounce. Licensed farmers would grow it, Ellis said.

“There would exist a presumption that a qualifying patient is engaged in the medical use of marijuana if the qualifying patient possesses a program identification card and possesses an amount of marijuana that does not exceed a one-month supply,” the text of the legislation said.

Neither patients nor practitioners would be subject to arrest, according to the bill.

The legislation would also require the legislature to appoint a 13-member select oversight committee on medical marijuana.

State Rep. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, pointed out a number of drugs go through controlled studies and still have serious issues.

“People use (marijuana) for the high they get. For me, that’s the problem,” noted Hensley, a physician.

Richardson’s request to defer the bill was to work on an amendment calling for the state Board of Pharmacy to be the administrator of the medical marijuana program.

The state’s Fiscal Review Office estimated that after the program’s second year, at least 10,000 patients would be registered.

But the office also noted the Departments of Health and Agriculture would need additional staff people during the program’s gradual implementation. Its recurring cost was estimated at about $1.5 million.

For more information go to www.capitol.tn.gov. The bill’s number is HB 2562. By Hank Hayes. Source.