BC Compassion Club Opposes Bill S-10 for Proposing Mandatory Minimum Sentences Against Patients and Cultivators
Archived from 1 October, 2010
Members and supporters of the BC Compassion Club Society will be holding rallies in Vancouver on Saturday, October 2 at 12.30pm, as part of a nation-wide Day of Action against Bill S10.
“The Conservatives are trying to impose mandatory prison sentences against people caught growing as few as six marijuana plants,” said BCCCS Communications Coordinator Jeet-Kei Leung. “This will be devastating for the compassionate cultivators under contract to the BCCCS and for the overwhelming majority of medical marijuana patients that do not have the Canadian Medical Marijuana Access Regulations (MMAR) card.”
BCCCS supporters and their allies will be rallying outside the offices of Liberal members of Parliament Dr. Hedy Fry and Ujjal Dosanjh in an effort to gather support against the bill. BCCCS is asking Liberals to oppose the controversial bill that would negatively impact the whole country.
The Conservative government is pushing Bill S-10 as a method by which to combat organized crime through mandatory minimum sentencing: a policy that even Conservative Senator and chairman of the Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs, Pierre-Claude Nolin, questioned as being ineffective because big traffickers have already accepted the risks of being caught.
“Mandatory minimum sentencing will inadvertently increase profits for organized crime, because it’s the small-time ‘mom and pop’ operators who will be scared off by mandatory sentences,” said Leung. “And it’s exactly organized crime who will be in the best position to step in to fill the void left by the disappearance of the cottage industry that’s involved in marijuana cultivation.”
Leung added, “The policy will also cost taxpayers as much as $10 billion over the next five years while clogging the courts and overcrowding prisons with non-violent offenders. The policy has not worked in the U.S., and it won’t work here.”
The rallies are part of nation-wide protests opposing Bill S-10, taking place in cities from coast to coast.