The War on BC's Small Pot Farmer

[JohnyCanuck]

Canada busts the mom n' pop grow-op while fostering the rise of biopharmaceutical marijuana.

On a bright spring morning in 2012, in the Kootenay region of B.C., Emma Wright* dropped her daughters off at their elementary school and returned to her log house to find three black SUVs parked under the apple trees and an armed, flak-jacketed RCMP unit in her kitchen. Her husband Peter* stood by wordlessly as a man dug through the freezer. In the living room, officers were taking family photo albums off the shelves. From upstairs there came the thumps and scraping sounds of furniture being moved. A cop dressed in black led an excited German shepherd into the bathroom on a tight leash. The officers had a search warrant.

The raid lasted eleven hours, Emma Wright says, ending with her and her husband's arrest on charges of marijuana production for the purpose of trafficking. Evidence of a grow-op had allegedly been found in a closet-sized room in their basement.

Three months after the raid, a bailiff came to their door and handed the Wrights a letter stating that the government was now laying claim to their house, vegetable gardens, woodshed and swing-set. Though the existence of the alleged grow-op had yet to be proven in court, the letter claimed that the Crown already had "reasonable grounds to believe" that the property had been used to carry out a crime. As the 2005 B.C. Civil Forfeiture Act states, a person's property may be seized, "even if no person has been charged with an offence that constitutes unlawful activity [or if] a person charged with an offence... was acquitted of all charges."

Because the act falls under the civil as opposed to the criminal code, decisions are made administratively under the assessment of the Civil Forfeiture Office's (CFO's) unnamed director. While judges used to hand out mild sentences to small-scale growers on trial, the new act means punishment for these offences is determined behind closed doors. Even those who used to grow legally have been shut down by the Harper government's new medical marijuana regulations, which will prohibit individuals from growing. Since the Civil Forfeiture Act was implemented, the CFO, whose stated purpose is to "take the profit out of crime," has hauled in $41 million.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/16/BC-Pot-Farmer/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=161213

[Eleanors38]

1. Canada whiffed the U.S. WOD flatulence and was intrigued. nt

[Bennyboy]

2. Goddamned hippies and their pot!

Gonna be a wird thing to see here in the US as well. Lotta people have had their land taken from them and jailed for growing pot and that is one reason why the people like to grow it on other peoples land and national forests, Nothing to lose that way.