The Liberals have dumped the controversial 100-centimetre height restriction on homegrown cannabis plants that lawyers had warned was apt to be struck down in court for arbitrariness and irrationality.
[…]
Ottawa criminal defence counsel Michael Spratt warned the committee last month “when you look at the rationale that has been disclosed for the criminalization of that one extra centimetre — looking at fence height, not looking at [plant] yield, or potency, or problems with distribution — that could very well lead to some Charter problems with respect to the rationality of that sort of somewhat arbitrary benchmark.”
Spratt pointed out someone could go away for a weekend as an innocent person, only to return as a criminal because her plants had grown a centimetre over the limit. “It is absurd that one centimetre of plant height would result in legal marijuana magically transforming into illicit marijuana — but under Bill C-45 one centimetre can make the difference between legality and a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in jail,” Spratt remarked. “The government’s vice squad will need to carry rulers and learn to divine the difference between identical legal and illicit marijuana.”
Read the full article: Law Times
