The wild west in Port Colborne
It’s kind of like the plot for a Hollywood movie — a quiet, peaceful community terrorized by a group of bandits.
The bad guys ride in with their guns blazing, while someone like Yul Brynner or Denzel Washington leads a group of seven magnificent gunslingers to protect the defenseless villagers.
Ward 4 Coun. Ron Bodner was pretty much dead-on in his analogy when he compared last week’s armed robbery of a greenhouse growing medical marijuana on Pinecrest Road in Port Colborne to the wild west.
In this case, there were a lot more than seven cops out there that morning protecting the community from a gang of bad guys. Nevertheless, judging by the comments of many of the “villagers” who were abruptly woken at 4 a.m. that day, the Niagara Regional Police officers who responded were pretty magnificent.
While some people have since dismissed all the hullabaloo, saying “it’s only marijuana” rather than crack cocaine or crystal methamphetamine, that’s not the issue here.
The issue is the safety of the community that surrounds the facility where the stuff is being produced.
On Sept. 19, their safety was seriously compromised. It’s not a unique problem. Right across Canada, smaller medical marijuana-growing facilities have been targets of violent crime.
One of the neighbours of the Pinecrest Road greenhouse compiled a list of news reports about similar occurrences that have happened in other communities. Here are a few of those reports: — Five people were arrested after an attempted break-in at a Health Canada-authorized medical marijuana producer in the central Ontario town of Innisfil at the start of this year.
— In February 2015, a 67-yearold-man was killed near Carstairs, Alta. when he was shot during a robbery. Police found $2.7 million worth of marijuana growing at the property, which was far more than was permitted by the Health Canada licence.
— And in March 2014, two people were injured during a daylight shooting and assault at a licensed medical marijuana grow operation in Langley, B.C.
While new legislation introduced in 2014 includes regulations to make production of the plant more secure, it doesn’t help the situation on Pinecrest Road and other older facilities - which were grandfathered under the previous Marijuana Medical Access Regulations legislation.
The older legislation seems to provide guidelines rather than regulations.
Asked about the requirements for inspections and security, Health Canada provided a link to a website advising growers: “You may want to consider installing strong locks.”
So our government is telling people: “Yes, you can grow a substance that may well attract armed bandits. But you know, come to think of it, maybe you ought to lock your doors.”
That should go a long way toward making the neighbours of those facilities feel far more secure.
Local police say the greenhouse on Pinecrest Road was exceeding the limits of its pot-growing licences. That led Port Colborne city hall to lobby the federal government to revoke the licences the greenhouse was operating under, and shut it down entirely.
It’s surprising the city would have to lobby at all. If, for instance, you abuse your driver’s licence, you lose it.
The allegation by police hasn’t been proven in court yet. But if it is, shouldn’t the same be true of licences to grow marijuana?