PETITION TARGETS USERS OF DATE-RAPE DRUGS

A 10,000-name petition calling for tougher penalties for people using
date-rape drugs has been tabled in Parliament by Conservative MP James Moore.

"Ten thousand Canadians have spoken," said Moore, MP for Port
Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam. "I only wish the Liberal government was
listening."

On International Women's Day, Moore launched a university and college
campus campaign to gain support for his plan to enact tougher laws against
date-rape drugs.

Moore met with students from the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser
University in Burnaby to Memorial University in St. John's and many in
between. Student associations and Conservative campus clubs helped gather
names.

"In recent years date-rape drugs have become a real menace to women," Moore
said. "The thugs and cowards who use these drugs to brutalize women need to
be fought in our laws, and women need to know how to protect themselves
from being victimized."

Typically date-rape drugs are secretly slipped into drinks or food; once
ingested they act rapidly, rendering the victim unconscious and
unresponsive with little or no memory of what happens to them while the
drug was active, he said. Traces of the drug can leave the body within 72
hours and often do not show up in routine toxicology screen or blood test.

"The problem - my thesis - is that these are unique drugs and should not be
subject to the same sanctions as self-imposed drugs," Moore said. "They are
used as a precursor to other crimes: assaults, rapes, sexual assaults and
kidnappings. They need much tougher penalties."

Although these drugs are controlled substances like heroin and cocaine,
possession is almost never met with jail time, and penalties are very
light, Moore said.

Moore has a Private Member's Motion (M-189) on the issue before Parliament,
which recommends to the government that GHB and Rohypnol, the most common
date-rape drugs, be identified in the Criminal Code under a separate
schedule as 'date-rape drugs' with new and tougher penalties.

The motion would also establish, in cooperation with the provinces and
territories, a national initiative to educate women on the dangers of
date-rape drugs and related substances; and create a national task force to
establish new guidelines for the collection and documentation of evidence
in sexual assault investigations to facilitate prosecutions.