Weed law aims to keep teens out of court

Avoiding prosecution for small amounts

• The federal government has tailored i ts highly anticipated marijuana legislation to ensure younger teens don’t wind up with criminal records for pot possession.

Currently, people between 12 and 17 can be charged for having any amount of marijuana, but the newly tabled legislation proposes that people under age 18 would not face criminal prosecution for possessing or sharing up to five grams.

Bill Blair, a Liberal MP working on the legislation, said Monday the goal is to give provinces and territories flexibility to prohibit young people from possessing any amount of cannabis, with the option to introduce noncriminal sanctions.

“There are far better ways to deal with those offences that don’t result in a criminal record, which are quite frankly more straightforward to enforce, less onerous to enforce, less costly to enforce but also achieve a much better social outcome by not giving those kids a criminal record,” he said.

Provinces could bring in a ticketing system — much like in Ontario for those under 19 caught purchasing, possessing or drinking alcohol, he noted. This requires “basic regulation” for the provinces, said Blair, a former Toronto police chief.

“I’m not minimizing the amount of work that needs to be done,” he said. “This is pretty straightforward … I’ve enforced those laws for 40 years so I’m familiar with how they work.”

He also challenged the suggestion that responsibilities have been downloaded.

“Actually, we want to make sure the rules and regulations that are put in place, in order to be effective, in order to achieve what it is we want to achieve, they’ve got to be at the right level of governance.”

The possession changes are among the many issues Ottawa and the provinces and territories need to iron out before marijuana is legalized next year including distribution, licensing and retail sales.

Toronto l awyer Daniel Brown said Monday that courts generally don’t prosecute minor marijuana possession charges for people under or over 18, noting these cases are often dealt with through a diversion program.

“Normally, what it takes is someone to do some community service” Brown said.

The problem is that this approach still r equires resources to bring these people into the court system, whether they are young offenders or adults facing minor marijuana charges.

NDP justice critic Alistair MacGregor expressed frustration about why government did not address the problem sooner. “It is going to take another 18 months to bring it into effect,” MacGregor said. “These are provisions that could have been brought in as an interim measure long ago. ... The federal government had the ability to act.”