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Pot remains burning issue
By Hempology | April 5, 2002
From Victoria’s WEEKEND EDITION
Friday, April 5, 2002
By Don Descoteau (Weekend Edition Staff)
Medicial marijuana supporters who gathered at Victoria City Hall this week left
disappointed, after hoping their attendance at a joint Victoria city council
and police board meeting would prompt local police and politicians to relax
enforcement of marijuana laws.
Instead, decisions on how to police the distribution of “medical marijuana” was
put off until later.
“We’re trying to avert disaster here,” said Ted Smith, founder of the
Cannabis Buyers’ Club.
Smith referred to the possibility that a seriously ill club member
might come to harm having to buy pot on the street if people
such as himself, a proponent of the distribution of pot as medicine,
continues to be arrested and charged in relation to marijuana
trafficking.
“We just want the Victoria police to consider making the enforcement
of cannabis laws a lower priority,” he said.
Smith said he had feared his club would be shut down by Victoria
police, but was encouraged after he and a number of medical
marijuana supporters addressed Victoria city council on the issue
back on March 28.
Victoria police Chief Paul Battershill refused, at the joint council-police
board meeting Tuesday, to discuss specifics in the case of Ted’s Books, the
storefront location where members of Smith’s club have been purchasing
marijuana for alleged medicinal purposes, because trafficking charges
against Smith are currently before the courts.
That left police board members and city councillors talking about the
general concept of medical marijuana and related policing options.
Smith – along with 20 club members and supporters who attended Tuesday’s
meeting – was hoping a decision would be made the would allow the club to
continue operating without fear of police intervention, and to continue
policing itself against alleged re-selling of pot on the streed by
unscrupulous club members, as police allege in a recent legal case against
Smith.
But for club members with high hopes of an easing of enforcement of exisitng
federal drug laws in Victoria, all that came out of the discussion was a promise
to gather information on the topic for a future police board meeting.
Victoria Coun. Art Vanden Berg said his understainding of what Smith and his
supporters were asking for at the previous March 28 council meeting was an
idea of what prorities the police would set for enforcement.
Battershill said while the department has a wide range of priorities, he doesn’t
think his officers are spending “an inordinate amount of time” enforcing marijuana
laws.
Coun. Pam Madoff asked if there weren’t other jurisdictions where police had
put marijuana investigations on a low-priority basis. Victoria deputy chief
Geoff Varley said he wasn’t aware of any departments where that was the case.
However, the Vancouver police department’s stance on the issue has been rather
well-publicized of late.
“I think you start down a very slippery slope when you tell police officers
‘we don’t want you to follow the law,’” said Battershill.
He said police officers are not authorized to make sudgement calls on what
is more or less important under the law.
Police say while Victoria medical pot distributors, such as the Cannabis Buyers
Club and the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, are illegally supplying
marijuana, given they are not licensed by the federal government at this time,
the biggest problem is the re-selling of pot on the street by people who have
purchased from such clubs.
Smith said he has a solution for such problems. “They tell us (who it is) and
we cut them off. It would end right there.”
Coun. Pam Madoff said she would be interested in hearing more about the
complexities of the medical marijuana debate. Battershill wasn’t getting
drawn into that discussion. He said he has turned down “about a dozen”
invitations to forums on the decriminalization of marijuana, because he
doesn’t think the police belong in that debate.
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