Conservatives want inhumane, unjust” anti-pot law

Cannabis Culture:

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 offences 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.

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.

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