Pubdate: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 Source: Campbell River Mirror (CN BC) Copyright: 2009 Campbell River Mirror Contact: http://www.campbellrivermirror.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1380 Author: Tom Fletcher Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) B.C. GOVERNMENT LOSING THE WAR ON DRUG GANGS There's one area of B.C. business investment that's seen a boom in rural areas. Unfortunately, it's organized crime. You may have heard the saga of Likely, a tiny community east of Williams Lake. Last fall RCMP confirmed results of a two-year investigation that found eight properties with buildings fitted for large-scale marijuana growing. At least one of those has been seized under civil forfeiture legislation, a powerful new tool in targeting proceeds of crime. Nine Lower Mainland residents were charged. Are there more Likelys out there? No doubt the gangs learned about the hazards of creating a cluster in one place. Just before New Year's Day, police used snowmobiles to raid a property near Clearwater, north of Kamloops. They described it as a machine shed with industrial-style wiring that appeared to have been built for a grow-op. Further north, Houston RCMP resorted to using their holding cells to store masses of seized hydroponic equipment. That's according to deputy RCMP commissioner Gary Bass, who spoke to a conference on the hazards of grow-ops in Surrey last May. The problem goes beyond marijuana, a relatively benign drug. Bass noted that the popularity of "B.C. bud" has led to many new players in the cocaine trade. Even small local groups tend to have ties to bikers in southern B.C. who have developed lucrative bud-for-blow arrangements reaching down to South America. And when bullets fly in B.C. communities, there are generally hard drugs, often cocaine, involved. Surrey Fire Chief Len Garis spearheaded a new approach that targets safety hazards of bad wiring and high electricity consumption. In 2006 the B.C. government passed legislation allowing municipalities to obtain hydro records showing high-consumption properties, then inspect those properties. Piloted in Surrey and Abbotsford, the approach has since been adopted in Coquitlam, Langley Township, Mission, Pitt Meadows, Port Coquitlam, Richmond, Surrey and Vancouver. Recent hydro records show a 20 per cent drop in high-consumption properties around the Lower Mainland. Now Garis fears the problem has simply been displaced to more remote sites. Gangs adapt quickly, buying power instead of stealing it, or going off the grid with generators in remote places. Small towns have few police resources, and can't afford electrical inspection teams on their own. Garis points to a recent survey of hydroponic equipment stores that found more than 80 in all regions of B.C., compared to 13 in Alberta and nine in Washington state. Police, firefighters and business groups supported a resolution at a recent municipal convention, calling on the B.C. government to require an electrical permit for buyers of high-powered lights and hydroponic gear. So far the government is non-commital. I asked Solicitor General John van Dongen why. He said his priority lately has been finding ways to regulate another illicit trade, metal theft. (A court decision two years ago said municipalities can't require pawn shops or scrap dealers to record sellers' identities.) He's also concerned about restricting legitimate hydroponic farming. "I'm going to take a bit more time to look at the hydroponic issue," he said. Garis says other provinces are acting. In 2006 Manitoba agreed to pay for electrical inspections, instead of leaving it to communities that can't afford it, as B.C. is doing. "We're a world crime superpower predicated on marijuana," a frustrated Garis told me. "Eighty per cent of what we're growing here is being distributed corporately to other provinces, the United States and elsewhere. "We've made a booming business out of it because we're resting on our laurels, saying, oh, we don't want to regulate, and yet this thing just spirals out of control. It's ridiculous." Prohibition doesn't work Before you start e-mailing me about the ultimate futility of prohibiting marijuana, let me say I agree. Former prime minister Paul Martin's government came close to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of pot, which could have begun to replace violent gangs with small-scale, benign growers. Needless to say, Stephen Harper's Conservatives aren't keen. They prefer mandatory minimum sentences for offenders, which sounds great until you look at the state of our court and prison system. If we could somehow solve drug gang violence, our courts would soon be quiet. Last week an Abbotsford man was sentenced to 12 years for attempted murder. He shot another man four times over a $140 drug debt. Ethnic gang realities Before you start e-mailing me about the reference to "Asian names," here's how the RCMP broke down gang activity as of 2005. They identified 108 groups, one quarter motorcycle gangs, nine per cent Asian triad-related (focused on heroin and diversifying into chemical precursors for meth and such), nine per cent Indo-Canadian, eight per cent Eastern European, and the remaining third independents, mostly Caucasian. As of last year, police had the capacity to investigate about one in four identified groups, so they rank them with a threat assessment. Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press newspapers. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin