Current sentencing practice for commercial quantity trafficking in the upper category is plainly inadequate and sentencing courts should no longer treat 10 years as a ceiling for this offence. For upper category CQ trafficking (quantity approaching LCQ threshold, principal role, sustained conduct, operational violence), sentences of 13-15 years are within range. Sentences for large commercial quantity trafficking must also increase substantially to maintain appropriate relativities. Drug trafficking which depends on violence and intimidation for its operational effectiveness is more serious than equivalent trafficking without violence, and operational violence properly aggravates the trafficking offence without constituting double punishment where separate sentences for the violence charges are moderate.
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