Rob Nicholson today reintroduced C-15 as Bill S-10, the bill is slightly different, with mandatory minimum sentences kicking in at 6 plants, not 1. So, to say again, the bill no longer has a mandatory minimum sentence for 1 marijuana plant.
That being said, the bill is a disaster for Canada. S-10 will imprison thousands of Canadians for victimless crimes, send people to jail for growing 6 marijuana plants, making any hashish (or baked goods) and a host of other offences.
There is no evidence that S-10 will work, indeed, every scientific study says it will fail. We know that prohibition has never worked, and we know that mandatory minimum sentences only increase the violence in our society.
Please contact your Member of Parliament (Login to WhyProhibition.ca, your MP will display in the top Right of the page) and let them know you oppose S-10 or any mandatory minimum sentence for marijuana.
Additionally, please, call (866) 808-8407 to let the Conservative Party of Canada know you oppose their harmful and dangerous so called "tough on crime" strategy. The evidence is clear, S-10 will do nothing but harm our society and cost billions of dollars. Read more »
Marijuana producers growing as few as six plants for sale could face minimum jail sentences if a new bill becomes law in Ottawa.
The Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act, or Bill S-10, was introduced in the Senate recently by Conservative Senator John Wallace.
If enacted, it will change laws surrounding drug charges, particularly those involving cannabis.
The bill has been considered twice before, dying first due to the general election call in 2006, and again in December 2009, when Parliament was prorogued.
Bill S-10 contains an entire section
pertaining specifically to marijuana. Under it, growers with as few as six plants face a minimum prison sentence of six months.
The new bill separates quantity of plants into two sections: less than 201 and more than five; or less than 501 and more than 200. Read more »
A Vancouver marijuana-legalization advocate claims Bill S-10, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s latest attempt to stiffen penalties for drug crimes, would cost the federal government between $2 billion and $5 billion a year.
“We did an economic analysis based on the number of people charged in a given year and the average sentence they received and the sentence they would receive under a mandatory minimum, and we applied those numbers to known costs per prisoner in jail,” Jacob Hunter, policy director for the Beyond Prohibition Foundation, told the Straight via cellphone from Toronto, where he is campaigning to free jailed “Prince of Pot” Mark Emery.
Bill S-10, called the Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act, would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and make changes to various other laws. It would usher in mandatory minimum penalties for drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana. The maximum sentence for marijuana production would be increased from seven to 14 years. Read more »
The federal government's rules regarding mandatory minimum sentences will cut into the bottom line of the provinces, some critics warn.
Parliament has already passed legislation that establishes mandatory minimum sentences for impaired driving and serious firearms offences. Now, another bill focused on organized drug crimes is before the Senate.
Mandatory minimums will lead to longer sentences behind bars and require additional prison space. But NDP justice critic Joe Comartin says there are also additional prosecution costs to mandatory minimum sentences.
"People are not going to plead guilty," he said. "We're not going to have plea bargaining arrangements because the prosecutor basically has nothing to offer the accused person in terms of a reduced sentence. So we end up with many more trials." Read more »
If my doctor told me that the medicine she prescribed was making me sicker, I would expect her to change the medication, not double the dosage. That’s why I found the Justice Department’s testimony before the U.S. Sentencing Commission last week so disturbing. Discussing mandatory minimums in federal sentencing, the department acknowledged the “very heavy price” extracted by mandatory minimums but then announced it was “carefully” considering asking Congress to impose new mandatory sentences for certain white collar offenses.
Stranger still: this misguided proposal for new mandatory minimums followed on the heels of a new charging memo for U.S. Attorneys. In the memo, Attorney General Eric Holder writes not once, not twice, but three times, that prosecutors should make “an individual assessment of the facts and circumstances of each particular case.” This commonsense instruction – to consider the facts of each case and the culpability of each defendant – is wholly appropriate and should better promote the purposes of sentencing. Mandatory minimum sentences, on the other hand, are designed and operate to eliminate such individual assessments from the hands of judges. Read more »
For decades, California has cracked down on crime, punishing offenders with textbook "tough" policies like mandatory minimums and stringent parole. The result has been a dramatic rise in the prison population. Today, about 167,000 adults are in jail in California. Offenders are now being locked up at a per-capita rate well over double what it was 30 years ago.
All those prisoners have cost the state's taxpayers dearly. In 1980 California spent about $1 billion on corrections. By 2007 that number had climbed to nearly $14 billion. Today about one in every nine dollars the state spends goes to prisons and prisoners.
Prison expenses are cited as a major factor in California's deteriorating finances. Legislators are now trying to push through measures to cut the prison population.
Given the California example, it's remarkable how little attention has been paid to the costs of dramatic changes being proposed for Canada's penal system. Read more »
Marijuana producers growing as few as six plants for sale could face minimum jail sentences if a new bill becomes law in Ottawa.
The Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act, or Bill S-10, was introduced in the Senate on May 5 by Conservative Sen. John Wallace.
If enacted, it will change laws surrounding drug charges, particularly those involving cannabis.
The bill has been considered twice before, dying first due to the general-election call in 2006 and again in December 2009 when Parliament was prorogued.
Bill S-10 contains an entire section pertaining specifically to marijuana. Under it, growers with as few as six plants face a minimum prison sentence of six months.
The new bill separates quantity of plants into two sections: Less than 201 and more than five or less than 501 and more than 200. Read more »
Senator Claude Nolin: Honourable senators, I think it is important to go over a bit of history. Bill S-10 proposes to amend the CDSA, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. That law was adopted by this chamber in 1996.
When we received the bill in 1995, the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs took the bill and studied it for three months. We heard from a vast array of experts and witnesses. At one point, the chair of the committee, the Honourable Senator Carstairs, decided to have an in camera meeting to determine what the feeling was around the table on both sides. Much to her surprise, she discovered that everyone, on both sides, was against the bill, Liberals and Conservatives alike. I was not surprised as I was new in the chamber and curious, so I had talked with colleagues from both sides. I can talk about that in camera meeting now because it is almost public. During that in camera meeting we decided that it was not appropriate for the committee to vote down the bill because we did not have enough information to do so.
I recommend that honourable senators read our report. It was Bill C-8 at the time, so it would be easy to go into the records and find the document. It is a rather long report in which we explained our frustrations. We also explained why we did not have enough information to vote the bill down. We recommended a joint committee of both houses to examine the subject matter of drug policy in Canada outside the constraints of a bill such as timing and pushing by the government. Therefore, we decided to recommend the creation of a joint committee. Read more »
Our Conservative government, which wants to jail people for possessing five marijuana plants, has no apparent idea as to what is causing violent crime in Canada. As a police officer for 20 years, I can tell you exactly the causes -- the abuse of alcohol and chemical drugs.
Smoking or growing a little pot for yourself and family ought not to be a crime and does not cause crime. A person makes a responsible decision to use pot instead of alcohol because pot is safer than alcohol in all respects.
My experience as a cop, along with my own personal experience with pot and alcohol, confirms that.
No one has ever died from using pot and pot use does not cause the social or even health problems associated with even moderate regular alcohol use. Read more »
Tenants caught growing as few as six marijuana plants in their dwellings could face automatic jail terms of at least nine months, under a federal drug-sentencing bill revived Wednesday that imposes harsher penalties on home renters than on owners.
The bill, introduced for the third time after dying twice before, proposes mandatory minimum jail terms for a variety of drug-related crimes, removing discretion for judges to sentence as they see fit.
The Harper government's proposed legislation imposes stiffer punishment on renters than it does on homeowners, because involving a third party is one of several aggravating factors.
"It is going to have a really detrimental affect on young people," predicted Tara Lyons, a fourth-year sociology student at Carleton University in Ottawa.
"More young people rent dwellings because they can't afford to buy their own, so this bill sets up a situation where the policies are crafted in the name of protecting children, but they are just presenting more harm to young people." Read more »
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Rob Nicholson today reintroduced C-15 as Bill S-10, the bill is slightly different, with mandatory minimum sentences kicking in at 6 plants, not 1. So, to say again, the bill no longer has a mandatory minimum sentence for 1 marijuana plant.
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