B.C. FAR TOO SOFT ON DRUG MERCHANTS

There's Just Too Much Ambiguity In Way Judges Sentence Drug Crime And
How We View Drugs

Given the high level of gang violence and other drug-related problems
in Metro Vancouver, you'd have thought it'd make sense to crack down
hard on drug dealers.

Yet, as a B.C. sentencing study -- finally released Monday by
Victoria -- shows, our judges really do seem to go soft on drug-traffickers.

That's compared even with judges in other Canadian provinces -- yet
alone in hard-nosed jurisdictions around the world with "zero
tolerance" toward drugs.

Indeed, one of the tables in the report reveals that, of those found
guilty of drug-trafficking in B.C., just 8.5 per cent wound up with a
jail term of more than six months.

That's proportionately less than all the other provinces with which
B.C. was compared -- namely Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.

And, let's remember, a six-month sentence doesn't really mean six
months in jail, as study co-author Anthony Doob acknowledged
yesterday. It typically means four months, and can be even less.

So it's hardly much of a discouragement to insecure young men who
might view the drug trade as a promising career move.

And isn't trafficking in drugs precisely what these gang-bangers are
engaged in, as they drive around in their SUVs delivering their own
killer brand of justice?

Then why do our courts seem so reluctant to, well, "nail them good"?

I think, in fact, Victoria should compare B.C.'s drug-trafficking
sentences with those in, say, Washington state or Sweden, which has
one of the western world's lowest drug-usage rates, or with various
Asian countries.

Now, that study would find our sentencing pretty wimpy.

Clearly, however, when it comes to cleaning up Metro Vancouver's ugly
drug problem, B.C.'s judges can't do everything.

Indeed, Doob, a University of Toronto criminologist, told me
yesterday that raising or lowering sentences doesn't by itself have
much, if any, impact on crime.

Doob also points out it costs $148 a day to keep a criminal in a B.C.
jail -- and a whopping $274 in a federal penitentiary. That's why he
suggests lowering jail sentences for lesser criminals, while raising
them for really bad ones.

"The people who have done relatively less-serious things are also
going to be punished, but they're going to be punished in a way that
doesn't punish me that much as a taxpayer," he said.

Not that Doob appears to favour legalizing low-level drug use. He
thinks criminalizing a behaviour is a good way of giving the message
it's not acceptable. This is what happened in 1968, when impaired
driving became a criminal offence in its own right.

My own view is we're still mired in the pro-drug rhetoric of the
1960s. Too many folks still think it's cool to take them, even if it
encourages vicious drug gangs.

The ambiguous attitude of B.C. judges toward the problem, in other
words, merely reflects our own.

We must try harder to change that.