Nine months in jail for drug dealer
Alcohol worse than crack-cocaine, says defence lawyer
by Mark Rendell
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, July 30, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
After a debate about the relative harm of crack-cocaine and alcohol, a second man was sentenced on Friday in relation to last December's drug busts in Yellowknife.
Stan Cochrane, 51, was handed a nine-month jail sentence for two counts of drug-trafficking.
Between Dec. 3 and 5, Cochrane sold two $80 bags of crack-cocaine to an undercover RCMP officer out of the back door of the Beck Court apartment building on Williams Avenue.
Stan Cochrane, sentenced on Friday, was one of 11 people arrested in Operation Goblin,
a drug bust last December which led to the seizure of 85 grams of crack-cocaine and around $32,000 cash. - NNSL file photo |
He was arrested a week later in Operation Goblin, an RCMP bust targeting the B.C.-based '856' gang that led to the arrest of 11 people and the seizure of 85 grams of crack-cocaine along with around $32,000 cash.
Although the phone number Cochrane was using to facilitate drug deals was obtained as part of the 856 investigation, Crown prosecutor Jennifer Bond said Cochrane did not appear to be a member of the gang.
According to defence lawyer Peter Harte, Cochrane - who has no previous criminal record - was a hard-working man who turned to crime late in life to support his family after falling on hard times.
Cochrane moved to Yellowknife from Stephenville, N.L., 12 years ago for work. Despite working several jobs, said Harte, Cochrane had difficulty making ends meet and saving for retirement.
"In some sense, Mr. Cochrane was vulnerable," said Judge Christine Gagnon.
People like him are attractive to gangs as low-level dealers because they don't have the traditional profile of a drug dealer, she said.
Gagnon added that part of her job in sentencing him, she said, was to send a message to other would-be dealers not to try solving financial woes through crime.
"People end up thinking it's a harmless activity," she said. "It's easy to turn a blind eye and say it's not that bad."
Despite being a first-time offender and appearing to be relatively low in the drug-dealing hierarchy in Yellowknife, Bond argued Cochrane should receive a sentence of 16 to 18 months in jail.
"Crack-cocaine is an insidious beast and something that needs to be taken very seriously by the courts," she said, quoting an earlier NWT court decision that said drug traffickers were "vultures preying on vulnerable members of the community."
Harte took a different view of the effects of crack-cocaine.
"We have an evidence-based system of justice," he said. "And there is no evidence in the jurisprudence about the effect of crack-cocaine other than anecdotal evidence."
"The problem we have in the NWT is alcohol," he said, noting that the majority of the criminal cases in NWT courts are related to alcohol, not crack-cocaine.
He also submitted a report written by a former drug policy adviser to parliament in the United Kingdom that claimed alcohol was linked to far more social problems than crack-cocaine.
Because the state regulates and sells alcohol, argued Harte, "It is responsible to a much greater extent than Mr. Cochrane," for a wide range of social problems and criminal activity in the NWT.
Harte argued that two years house arrest would be an appropriate sentence. But given recent legislation requiring a mandatory minimum sentence for trafficking, he suggested that six to nine months in jail would be fair.
Bond responded that Harte's argument about alcohol and crack-cocaine was based on false-equivalency.
The reason the NWT sees more crime related to alcohol than crack-cocaine, she argued, is not because alcohol is a more damaging drug, but because it is more widespread.
Many people use alcohol responsibly, she argued, while this is not true of crack-cocaine. And even the study Harte submitted to the court, she pointed out, said that crack-cocaine is more harmful to individual health than alcohol.
Although Gagnon handed Cochrane a sentence closer to the one suggested by Harte, she agreed with parts of the prosecution's argument.
"Drug trafficking does not happen in a vacuum," she said, adding even low-level dealers are part of a structure that perpetuates violence in Canada and around the world.
