Dear Editor:

On Nov. 20, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Rob Nicholson introduced legislative reforms for mandatory jail time for people who commit the serious crimes of producing and selling illegal drugs. The safety of our communities must be protected from illegal drug producers and dealers; those producers and dealers must face tougher penalties. The proposed amendments this government is introducing - resulting in mandatory prison sentences for certain serious drug offences - will go a long way toward protecting the communities we live in. These amendments will make offenders think twice about setting up grow ops and drug labs in our residential areas and, particularly, lessen the exposure of our youth to drugs. The message is clear: if you sell or produce drugs - you'll pay with jail time. This legislative measure is part of the Government of Canada's $63.8 million national anti-drug strategy. This strategy is a collaborative effort involving the Department of Justice, Public Safety Canada and Health Canada. The strategy includes three action plans: preventing illicit drug use; treating those with illicit drug dependencies; and combating the production and distribution of illicit drugs.

Myron Thompson, Wild Rose MP

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Calgary's Homeless Problem Not Just About Housing

Eight days before I found myself in the underground parking garage of the Drop-In Centre listening to a social worker practice his bagpipes, I drove downtown with Gauntlet photographer Chris Pedersen, an audio recorder and vague notions of the insidious link between mental illness and homelessness. In mid-September, I had explored homelessness for a piece focusing on the lack of affordable housing in Calgary. While conducting research for that article I kept coming across another pair of issues exacerbating the problem--mental illness and substance abuse. The deeper I delved into this issue, the more it became apparent that there is an entirely different world in this city: a desolate world where people live on the street, where drugs and alcohol are abused by many and where a significant number suffer untreated mental illness. A world where a man playing bagpipes in the basement of a homeless shelter no longer seems strange.

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A review of AADAC services provided under the new legislation to protect youth abusing drugs shows that more than 600 families have benefited from the drug treatment program.

The report found that almost half of the youth served under the Protection of Children Abusing Drug Act (PChAD) continued on to voluntary treatment after being discharged.

As well, more than half of the youth in the program reported an improvement in their quality of life one month after discharge, notably in the areas family relationships and physical health.

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The federal government is cracking down on the production of illegal drugs and is getting tougher on those who sell them. And that's just what the doctor ordered, says Wild Rose member of Parliament Myron Thompson.

On Nov. 20 the federal Conservatives introduced a series of changes to Canada's drug laws, including new mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of producing and selling illegal drugs.

"The safety of our communities must be protected from illegal drug producers and dealers; those producers and dealers must face tougher penalties," said Thompson. "The proposed amendments this Government is introducing resulting in mandatory prison sentences for certain serious drug offences will go a long way toward protecting the communities we live in. These amendments will make offenders think twice about setting up grow-ops and drug labs in our residential areas, and particularly, lessen the exposure of our youth to drugs. The message is clear: if you sell or produce drugs - you'll pay with jail time."

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The other night while watching news on T.V. I watched as a native fellow was facing charges as a "Dangerous Offender" because he had lost his drivers' licence eighteen times and had been charged with Vehicular Homicide in the death of four innocent people. Then on the news the next time I witnessed an "Amber Alert" posted in the disappearance of the 6 year old boy from Drumheller. The perpetrator was apprehended and will appear in court on charges of illegal confinement and kidnapping. I hope he also faces charges as a Dangerous Offender.

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If success in Afghanistan depended only on defeating the Taliban on the battlefield, it could be thought well on the way to done.

But, the struggle has an economic dimension. Victory in the marketplace is as much the prerequisite for a new Afghanistan as military control and perversely, it will take more troops to win that battle, too. Its challenges are as formidable, in their way, as those this country's young men and women have confronted with such elan in Kandahar province.

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Re: Mindelle Jacobs's Tuesday article on legalizing pot. I would like to make a prediction. She will be inundated with a myriad of letters from right-wing idiots calling her a "liberal." I agree that we have pissed away enough tax dollars on such a futile, uncontrollable substance. That said, I'm not a dredlock-sporting idealist who thinks pot is harmless. It's not. But it is about choice and should I choose to smoke a joint, the only thing harmed will be my lungs and some brain cells. One question for Mindelle, though. How in the hell do you and Michael Coren work in the same building?

Bill George

(They use separate entrances. Kidding! They work in different cities.)

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Letter writer Chris Buors (Nov. 25) does not agree the with the Conservative government's approach to crime. He feels incarcerating drug dealers like they do in the U.S., is a waste of time and will not make us any safer. The fact is, increases in violent crime here are directly related to the drug trade. The violent crime rate in Canada was 951 per 100,000 in 2006 compared to only 473.5 in the U.S. If made-in-Canada solutions to violence like our revolving-door justice system, the youth criminal justice act and strict gun control works so well, where is the proof? While our violent crime rate continues to increase, Americans enjoy a 30-year low for all rates of crime.

Jeff Gardiner

(Interesting question.)

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Re: Glenn Kauth's Tuesday article. It's no secret that illicit drugs fuel organized crime and foster petty crime. They also undermine healthy families and safe communities across Canada. This is why the government of Canada has taken action by introducing legislative reforms to introduce mandatory jail time for serious drug offences. That is aimed at organized criminals and others who prey upon our youth. Our legislation contains an exception that allows a drug treatment court to impose a lesser penalty if the offender successfully completes an approved drug treatment program and if the offence did not involve any aggravating factors such as violence.

Rob Nicholson,

Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

(Sounds like a plan to us.)

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Reader Jeff Gardiner argued the much higher rate of violent crime in Canada (951 crimes per 100,000 persons in Canada versus 474 in the U.S in 2006) is evidence their "war on drugs" is an effective policy we should emulate. This is a dangerous misunderstanding. The U.S. violent crime rate is a composite of only four major crimes: Murder, aggravated assault, rape and robbery. In Canada, it includes all of these as well as other crimes, most importantly simple assault, which constitutes the majority of violent crime charges. This means, using U.S. definitions, our "violent crime rate" is actually lower than in the U.S. Our murder rate is roughly one-third of that in the U.S. Our crime rates are moreover the lowest in 25 years. We manage all this with a rate of imprisonment roughly one-seventh that in the U.S., the most punitive and violent western nation.

Dr. John Manzo,

Associate Professor, Sociology

University of Calgary

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Last week was National Addiction Awareness Week, and Grande Prairie's Community Action on Crime Prevention group and the Grande Prairie and Area Drug Action Committee set about making sure it wasn't a wasted opportunity to focus some much-needed attention on the topic of substance abuse.

Staff Sergeant Ian Sanderson - formerly stationed here and now based out of Edmonton as an operative of K Division - was brought in to do just that, offering a series of three public presentations at the Golden Age Centre, as well as additional talks at local schools.

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Symptoms, Street Values Of Popular Drugs

Where there's a demand, there's always a supply.

And Highway 2 acts as a pipeline for drugs like cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana and crystal methamphetamine coming into High River.

"We're very close to Calgary, and a lot of the major drug suppliers come from there," High River RCMP Const. Erik Youngstrom said.

"It's a safe bet that the majority of drugs are coming from Calgary. Organized crime is believed to be the source."

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Youth have the Kids Help Phone to turn to for support.

Now, local prostitutes will soon have their own hotline to call.

The support line, a project of the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton, has already begun training seven former prostitutes who will volunteer to staff the phones. The goal is to make help available outside of the agency's business hours to prostitutes needing support, said Dawn Hodgins, PAAFE's special projects co-ordinator.

The plan so far is to have the peer counsellors work from their homes, where they'll have a phone set up to receive calls from the hotline number. The goal is to have the system running some time next year, Hodgins said.

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As the harvest season and winter preparation progress, the RCMP are encouraging vigilance where anhydrous ammonia and other farm chemicals are concerned. At this very busy time of the year when farmers are getting the crop in or preparing their fields and equipment for winter, the RCMP Drug Enforcement Units are also thinking about agricultural, in particular fertilizer, and wondering if some is being diverted into the manufacturing of dangerous drugs.

According to Sergeant Mark Mathias, with the Mayerthorpe RCMP, people need to be on the lookout, but producers of methamphetamine can be hard to spot.

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It starts out like many other weekend party nights, but can result in some pretty hefty consequences. You have been drinking alcohol or smoking pot and while driving home, you are stopped by the police.

If you are charged with impaired driving, do you realize that even before you go to court, you automatically lose your license for three months? The fingerprints and photographs the police take will be retained in their computers for anyone to access.

Your car insurance rates will skyrocket and your employment may be jeopardized. If you are a first time offender, and you are convicted of impaired driving you automatically lose your license for a period of one year. You will also have to pay a fine of anywhere from six hundred to a thousand dollars. If this is your second, third or subsequent conviction, you will lose your license for anywhere from three years to life. Minimal mandatory jail time of anywhere from fourteen to ninety days is also imposed.

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EDMONTON - Lengthy prison sentences should be reserved for the worst traffickers who use children or guns to deal drugs, and shouldn't be based primarily on how much they sell, says a U.S. expert on drug-control policy.

"You want drug sentences to be based not merely on the drug that's being sold and the quantity, which is the fundamental basis for most drug sentencing both in the U.S. and in Canada, but on the conduct of the drug seller," said Mark Kleiman, who directs the drug policy analysis program at UCLA School of Public Affairs.

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EDMONTON - Six children were apprehended and a 13-year-old girl was charged with drug possession after Bonnyville RCMP searched a family home Tuesday.

RCMP found 37 grams of crack cocaine and about $2,000 cash in the home.

A 68-year-old man and two women, ages 24 and 45, have been charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking. The women are mothers of the children whose ages are 17, 15, 13, 13, 11 and the youngest, who's still in diapers, looked about a year old, said Staff Sgt. Dave Elliott.

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It has been a busy time in Ottawa. The House Committee has just passed a massive reform to the criminal justice system requiring mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes, and raising the age of protection from 14 to 16.

Our Conservative government has taken action on justice reform, but we believe that there is more to be done.

We have recently introduced three justice bills to tackle young offenders, require mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers, and crack down on identity theft.

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Man Who Overdosed on Cocaine Died in Police Custody

EDMONTON - Police and paramedics need to be better educated to deal with aggressive, crazed people, says a provincial judge who has reviewed the case of a man who died in police custody.

Judge Monica Rae Bast said emergency personnel need to better recognize when people are in a state of excited delirium, a medical condition that can be caused by drug overdoses and mental-health issues.

The condition has been implicated in recent Taser-involved deaths.

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Public policy experts are often at odds with governments on how best to handle complex social issues and it was no different yesterday at a national addictions conference in Edmonton.

There is no evidence that tough enforcement of drug laws either reduces the availability or increases the price of illicit drugs. Yet the U.S. has consistently maintained its hardline stance on drugs over the years and the Harper Conservatives just announced that Canada, too, will impose stricter sanctions for certain drug crimes.

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