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Canada's Drug-Crime Rate Rises as Marijuana Offences Soar
Bloomberg | February 23, 2004 16:15 EST

(Bloomberg) -- Canada's drug-crime rate rose to a 20- year high in 2002, soaring 42 percent from the early 1990s mainly because of a surge in marijuana possession charges, Statistics Canada said.

Marijuana offences rose 80 percent from 1992 to 2002, accounting for about three-quarters of drug-related crimes, StatsCan said. While more Canadians were arrested for possession of pot, trafficking offences declined to 22 percent of all crimes related to the drug.

Canada is considering easing penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana and toughening the rules on selling drugs to reduce the amount of time police and courts spend prosecuting users. Drug offences represented almost one in 10 Canadian court cases in 2001 and 2002, StatsCan said.

Judges fined 57 percent of adults convicted of possessing illegal drugs and jailed the offenders in 12 percent of cases. Probation or conditional sentences were handed out in the remainder, StatsCan said.

From 1992 to 2002, about 10 percent of homicides involved drugs, resulting from situations such as trafficking and settling of drug-related accounts, the government agency said. Cocaine was involved in 60 percent of the drug-related homicides.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Kevin Bell in Toronto at kbell2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor of this story:
Erik Schatzker at eschatzker@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: February 23, 2004 16:15 EST

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Alien Space Signal

There's no money for your issue so long as we're squandering $50 billion a year on the DrugWar. Ben Masel

Fear became the ultimate tool of this government - V.

 

poTCat

Heh. I wonder if that was intentional.