|
|
|
THE MEDIA
DEBATE 2004
THE ISSUE: CANNABIS IN CANADA
ON THE OTHER SIDE: LEGAL REGULATED
MARKET PREFERRED
Living in Peace With Cannabis Consumers
* Arguments favouring decrim are listed here, as the intention is to supposedly be moving in the right direction.
The
Players:
- Bad
Laws And The People Who Change
Them It Wasn't The Unlawful Open Selling Of Pot That Brought
The Heat Down On Da Kine
Cafe. It Was The Lawful Political Dissent Expressed In That Act
That Brought Out The
Shields
- Proprietors
Promote Pot
Peace
- Saint
John Pot Cafe Busted
- Pot
Paradise Lost Reefer
Refugees Caught In U.S. War On Drugs Freaked By Feds' Order To Deport
Cancer Patient. Now, with the
Kubby decision, other medical marijuana users seeking refugee status in
Canada are fearful about
their own cases
- Pot
Activist Jailed marijuana activist was
sentenced to three months in jail after pleading guilty to
trafficking when he passed a joint
- 'We'll
Rally Everybody,' Pot Activist
Says Angry that the Liberal government wants to simply
decriminalize -- but not legalize --
marijuana, activists across the country are threatening to make any
decriminalization law
unworkable by burying police in paperwork and tying up the courts in
red tape
- End Pot
Persecution, Activist
Says "This is a very vicious worldwide pogrom against our people
for the crime of free thinking
and creative thought and questioning authority," Marc Emery
- Police
Yank Hemp Mascot Out Of
Parade
Medical Activists:
- Physicians
Call For
Decriminalization
- Feds
Talk Compassion The
medical marijuana movement may be getting more respect ... pro-pot
activist attended a meeting with
the Health Canada Stakeholder Advisory Committee on the Medical
Marijuana Access Regulations
- Legalized
Marijuana Advocate Invited
To Speak At Boston Conference
- Cannabis
Crusader Appeals Calgary
- Grant Krieger Is Appealing His Controversial Pot Conviction From Last
Month. "I don't feel
justice was done in that courtroom that day,"
- Medicinal
Pot Crusader
Busted Grant Krieger, 49, said he was pulled over Tuesday
night by RCMP, who seized
roughly $7,500 worth of marijuana and cash from his vehicle.
- Charges
Dropped Against Medical
Marijuana Club Toronto Ont - Two directors of the Toronto
Compassion Centre, which had
more than 1,200 clients, were charged with a number of
marijuana-trafficking related charges after
a dozen police officers raided the operation in August 2002.
- Medical
Pot Advocate Says Jail
Conditions Cause of His Hepatitis C Halifax NS - Mr.
Patriquen, the first federal
inmate ever to possess a Health Canada permit to legally possess and
consume marijuana, was not
allowed to have any in jail. The Correctional Service of Canada,
which has the right to ban
cannabis use in federal prisons, said it can't legally buy the drug.
- Crusader's
Wife, Son Arrested For
Pot Swift Current Sask - Mounties arrested Marie and
Ryan Krieger following a
traffic stop on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Swift Current.
- Pot
Bust Sends Society
Reeling Victoria, B.C. - Last week's RCMP bust of an East
Sooke marijuana grow-op has
deprived almost 400 people from the medicinal pot they desperately
need, according to the president
of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society
- Police
Raid Smiths Falls Offices Of
Medicinal Marijuana Police seized 221 marijuana plants from
the headquarters of the
Carasel Harvest Supply Corporation,
- Compassion
Club Operator Sees Pot
Charges Stayed By Judge Victoria, B.C. - Ted Smith and Colby
Budda have had drug charges
against them stayed in a ruling by provincial court Judge Loretta
Chaperon.
- Pot
Activist Thrown In Jail
Winnipeg, Man - Defence lawyer had asked judge to give
Chris Buors a conditional
sentence because he was growing the drugs for people suffering from
serious illnesses. Though
Buor's motivation may have been compassion, the court couldn't condone
his conduct, MacInnes
said.
- Political
Prisoner in War on
Herb Buors makes no bones about it -- unless doctors start issuing
permits to people who feel
they need the herbal remedy, he will reopen the compassion club and
start all over again once he's
released.
- Pot
Supporter Launches Challenge Of
His Arrest. Ted Smith of Victoria, who has had numerous
victories and defeats in the
courts throughout the years, tried to advance a constitutional
challenge to his arrest and
charges.
- Pot
Centre Opens Regina Sask - A
well-known medicinal marijuana crusader has defied the law yet again
and opened a cannabis
distribution centre.
- Using
Marijuana As Medicine
Niagara Ont. - Last September, Mernagh founded the Niagara Compassion
Society, a non-profit
organization that helps people obtain marijuana for medical reasons.
- Hemp
Festival Aims To Heighten Public
Awareness Atlantic Canada's first-ever hemp festival, a
two-day event aimed at
raising awareness about the use of medicinal marijuana. The non-profit
group Maritimers Unite for
Medical Marijuana (MUMM) plans to use the festival to highlight
its ongoing concerns about
the growth, supply and distribution of medicinal marijuana.
- Feds'
False Bud Advertising
Our friendly neighbourhood pot promoters, Canadians for Safe Access (
CSA ), are calling for an
immediate moratorium on the distribution of medical pot after
independent testing of the feds' bud
revealed that THC levels are nowhere near the 10.2 per cent claimed by
Health Canada.
- 'Compassion
Club' To Open
Doors Montreal Que -David Mckenzie plans to open a
"compassion club" there and sell
marijuana to anyone who can show proof of a medical condition that
would qualify for legal pot from
the federal government
- Pot Law
Sparks Local
Protest for one defiant cancer survivor who decided to smoke
marijuana on the steps of
Kingston Police headquarters. The demonstration ended without
incident.
.
ALSO SEE: CULTURE
The Arguments:
- Drug
Reform's Next Frontier When predominantly
conservative editorial boards
have hopped so willingly on to
the legalization bandwagon that they're wearing the T-shirts, you start
to wonder who's left on the
other side [No need to wonder - Cops, Hell's
Angels and most
politicians]
- A case for Marijuana Inc ...when the neo-cons and
hippies start agreeing on policy
issues, it's a pretty good sign you've fallen behind a social trend.
- Tax on
Legal Pot Could Hit $2
Billion Marijuana should be legalized and
then taxed like any another
other product, says a study by an economic think tank. The Fraser
Institute estimates that such a move would easily generate over $2
billion a year in additional tax
revenues.
- Marijuana
Mountain Built Out Of
Molehill Alan Young: Having been deeply involved in the fight to
change our marijuana laws, I
feel some discomfort in again writing about the debate. But the
government continues to weave a web
of deception. We find ourselves in a political twilight zone on the
marijuana issue.
- Is War
On Drugs Worth The Cost?
We just would rather have our understaffed and underfunded police
department focused on laws that
increase public safety rather than reduce it.
- Dosanjh
Should Do The Decent
Thing Speaking of misguided drug policies, Canada's
health minister, Ujjal Dosanjh,
needs to rethink the federal government's approach to medical marijuana.
- Locking
Pot Users Up Isn't Working,
Says Former Health Officer
- Five
Years for Sharing Many a
greying baby boomer remembers the first social rule among marijuana
smokers is "don't bogart" --
that is, hoard -- "that joint." What they likely don't know is that
anyone who follows this
friendly advice and shares the weed is guilty of drug trafficking.
- Policy
Of Prohibition A Failure
I was appointed to the provincial court of British Columbia on Feb. 15,
1975.I retired on Aug. 13,
2003.During those 28 years, I presided over at least 1,000 cases, some
big, most small, involving
the possession or sale of illegal drugs
- The
Fraud Of Pot
Decriminalization Dan Gardner
- Drug
Laws Make The Body A
Battleground Alan Young
- Search
Heats Up Home Privacy
Concerns The Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the Walter
Tessling case is a blow to the
right of personal privacy for Canadians. It's also in stark contrast to
a decision of the United
States Supreme Court, which produced the opposite result on a virtually
identical set of
facts.
- Sweeping,
Obtuse Laws Can Be
Instruments of Oppression
- Privacy
Going To Pot Camera in
the Sky Keeping an Eye on Us Please and Thanks, Chalk up a win for Big
Brother in the Supreme
Court.
- Delusions
On All Sides Dan
Gardner
- Pointless
Prohibition It's been
obvious for some time that Canadian society is ready to move beyond its
existing drug laws. But
nothing could make it much clearer than the recent case of a Vancouver
"pot cafe.
- The
Problem Is, The Problem
Returns That's What's Wrong With Using Prisons To Fight Crime
- Pot
Laws An Enigma It's hard to
escape the pungent irony of a federal government that is planning to
decriminalize pot possession
in Canada while law enforcement and municipal officials here at home
are gearing up for an all-out
assault on marijuana grow houses.
- Time
To Abandon Failed Marijuana
Policy The government also needs to be on the alert for unintended
consequences. The Organized
Crime Agency noted last year that efforts against grow ops had driven
gangs into the production of
crystal meth, a drug taking a terrible toll on young British Columbians.
- Less
Time For Pot, More On Meth
There is a considerable difference between mellow puffers of pot who
can barely get off the couch,
and speed freaks with the unimaginable energy, drive and will to
destroy all that is good in
us
- The
Politics Of Pot It's easy to
take pot shots at fringe parties in Alberta, given the strength of the
provincial Tories. Heck,
even parties that are mainstream in other provinces are relegated to
fringe status here.
- A
Dopey Scheme Gone To Pot "It
grows anywhere! Sprinkle a few seeds on the ground, you got pot! Why
are we 10 storeys underground
in an abandoned copper mine? Creating artificial sunlight! To grow bad
medicinal pot for less than
600 people! It's totally whacked!"
- Decriminalizing
Marijuana Doesn't
Lead to Increased Use
- Criminalizing
Social Ills Won't Cure
Them
- Let's
Face Facts: It's Time To Make
Marijuana Legal
- Prohibition
Didn't Work the First
Time
- Alcohol
Kills More People Than
Heroin, Cocaine
- Pot
Heads To Headlines
- Confessions
of a Recreational Drug
User
- Straight
Dope On Police Scare
Tactics
- Legalize,
Not Demonize, Pot
- Your
Money On Drugs
- Regulation
A Better Pot
Option
- Should
Pot Be Legal?
- Government
Should Reap Pot Rewards,
Not Organized Crime
- The
Lesser Of Two Evils
- Pot
Laws: Only Two Possible
Choices
- Drug
War Failing
- Time
To Abandon Failed Marijuana
Strategy
- We
Don't Need Tougher Drug
Laws
- Like
Other Businesses, Organized
Crime Is Based On Supply and DemandDan Gardner
- Coleman's
Drug War Overlooks the Gun
Problem
- Race,
Sentencing, And The War On
Drugs
- Welcome
to Drug-War Armaggedon
Reverend Damuzi
- Let's
Legalize Pot And Tax
It
- Pot
Cafes A Sign Of The Future
Russell Barth
- Attitude
Toward 'bud' Embarrassingly
Provincial In the 11 years between 1909 and 1920, legislators in
Victoria appealed directly to
the people on three separate occasions to learn which way they should
go on laws dealing with a
popular drug. In this case, it was alcohol.
- Public-Private
Jail Proposal Sets
Off Alarms.
- Gripped
by Reefer Madness
Philippe Lucas
- Reefer
Madness Prevails
- Keeping
Pot Illegal Is Real Reefer
Madness If you could grow marijuana and sell it outside the black
market, the price would drop
and the government could tax it, tax it again and then tax it some more
and it would still be
cheaper than it is now. Government could earn about $2 billion a year,
according to the right-wing
think-tank the Fraser Institute.That's a lot of MRI machines. That's a
lot of teachers. That's a
lot of soldiers.It turns out the only real reefer madness is the
insistence on keeping this stuff
illegal.
- Shades
Of Reefer Madness when
View editor Chris "Rock" Watson forwarded me an e-mail in big block
headlines entitled, PUBLIC
HEALTH REVEALS the MARIJUANA TRUTH, I actually thought it was a gag
perpetrated by those notorious
doobie brothers who run the Up in Smoke cafe in beautiful ( ? )
downtown Hamilton.
- Weeding
Out the Reefer
Madness
|
Last Modified:Thursday, 10-Jan-2008 11:17:37 PST
|