Canadian agents deny their country in lax on large scale growers --they say Canada and the U.S. just have different philosophies when it comes to crime:
"Canada just has a different philosophical view to the use of jail than the United States," Mr. Prior said. "The only offense we are completely agreed on is murder. Otherwise, it's very different."
The killer of the 4 Royal Mounted Canadian Police yesterday has been identified as "a violent police-hater with a short fuse and an arsenal of weapons."
James Roszko, 46, was notorious in the town and was feared by waitresses, high school students and community officials for his aggressive behaviour. RCMP regional Supt. Marty Cheliak had few answers for a grieving community wondering how a police search for stolen property at Roszko’s farm could dissolve into a bloody massacre....He would not say who actually ordered the Mounties to approach a quonset hut on the farm that housed a marijuana grow operation.
....Cheliak said events started to unfold Wednesday when two officers went to Roszko’s farm to seize property under a civil court order. Once there, they found a marijuana grow operation and proceeded to get a search warrant. The RCMP guarded the scene to secure it while they waited for auto theft detectives from Edmonton to arrive Thursday. Two officers began the stakeout before dawn Thursday. They were joined by two more officers around 9 a.m.
About 15 minutes later, the auto theft officers arrived. When they stepped out of their car, they heard shots inside the quonset hut. Roszko then ran out of the hut and fired shots from a carbine assault-style rifle.
This was a one-lunatic rampage by a man involved in stolen property who also grew marijuana -- it was not an organized killing by a gang of B.C. bud growers. That hasn't stopped some in Canadian law enforcment from calling for tougher action on pot growers. But, some legislators think this just strengthens the argument for legalization:
I find it a shame that on the heels of this tragedy we have people calling for tougher sentences," St-Maurice said. "It is, sadly, a lack of respect, I think, towards those fallen officers to boil it all down to marijuana. By doing that, we're not serving their interests. We're missing the boat altogether."
One columnist in the National Post points out the "drug war" can't be won:
The number of people who died yesterday trying to fight the marijuana trade exceeds -- by four -- the total number of people known to medical science to have died from a marijuana overdose, ever. Compare this to alcohol, an addictive substance that kills a million people every year around the world, but which is advertised on television; or tobacco, which kills four times as many as booze, and which is sold at gas stations and pharmacies.
....Compared to the United States, we are half-hearted participants in the war on drugs. Unlike the Americans, we do not compromise the war for hearts and minds in Afghanistan by spraying poison on Afghan crops. We do not send nuns to their death in a bid to clear South America's skies of drug runners. We do not send armies of black men to jail for the crime of selling white men what they want to buy. To our great credit, we wage the war on drugs half-heartedly, armed with the secret knowledge that it is a fraud -- that drugs are a health problem to be treated in clinics, not a crime problem to be treated by SWAT teams.
