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Current Affairs 2005 - Reform (115 items)
| Mar 11, 2005 | Canada could be a world leader in smarter drug strategies For the past three days, we have examined how the federal government's
prohibitionist approach to dealing with marijuana has utterly failed to
reduce the supply of, or demand for, the drug. Cannabis use appears to be
associated with cultural and social factors, rather than with the harshness
of the laws or the degree of their enforcement.
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| Mar 10, 2005 | Devil's Advocate In a news story of this size and scope, the first casualty in the mainstream media is the truth....the mainstream media played their Orwellian word association game. Marijuana-Grow Operation-Four Cops Killed. We have seen this before. Muslim-Fundamentalist-Terrorist. Native-Reservation-Alcoholic. Male-Black-Criminal. Male-White-Racist.
See? Pushing your political agenda through the media in the midst of the nation's grief is how you keep your job. It seems as if some politicians shed crocodile tears to further their agenda of cannabis prohibition. Some politicians would rather have Health Canada approve pharmaceuticals responsible for thousands of deaths every year, than tell the truth about the medicinal value of the cannabis plant.
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| Mar 3, 2005 | BC Supreme Court Wants More Proof Before Ruling on Validity of Pot Laws VANCOUVER -- Have the laws against marijuana fallen? That was the
question before the BC Supreme Court today... the judge declined to give a Constitutional exemption from
Canada’s unworkable medical cannabis access system without more proof
that her rights had been violated.
[ A very significant case winding it's way to the Supreme Court] |
| Feb 25, 2005 | It's Time for Canada to Legalize Cannabis Most arguments against cannabis legalization are moralistic, whereas the arguments in favour are pragmatic and would help to protect minors, users, and society.
The time has come to legalize cannabis.
[Straightforward and to the point. Hooray!] |
| Feb 22, 2005 | Motion Calls For Taxation Of Legal Marijuana OTTAWA -- Delegates to the Liberal party convention next month will debate a motion to legalize and tax marijuana sales, saying it would bring in billions in new tax revenue.
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| Feb 21, 2005 | CN NK: Pot café owner found guilty of trafficking SAINT JOHN, N.B. - The owner of the Cannabis Café in Saint John has been found guilty of drug trafficking, after a judge rejected the defence that she was running a compassion club.
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| Feb 13, 2005 | PUB LTE: Grow-Op Hazard Hyped But police want to make sure that the public is deathly afraid of marijuana growing because they want prohibition to stay in effect. That is why they exaggerate the dangers and value of plants, and the press just report what police tell them without asking any questions.
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| Feb 9, 2005 | CN BC: It's No Fix, But It's The Best We Can Do For Addicts "I would bet any amount of money the U.S. has exerted extreme pressure on Canada to abort this trial," Alex Wodak, a prominent Australian addictions researcher, has said. He should know: U.S. opposition helped to abort a heroin trial in his country. It is to Ottawa's credit that Canada has resisted similar pressure from the Bush administration, whose addictions policies owe more to narrow moralism than to science, compassion or insight.
[Canada promised to crack down harder on cannabis users in return for no interference into the heroin trial?
Another example (like the war in Iraq), where we are more in tune with our European ancestors than our Commonwealth cousins.] |
| Feb 3, 2005 | So You Want to Grow Your Own Pot I, as a proud pot-smoking Canadian, have been a trifle disturbed by some of the anti-drug rhetoric floating around lately. We've seen such gems as Anne McLellan labelling all pot smokers as "stupid" and the shameless use of an American national tragedy to push an inane anti-drug agenda: namely, advertisements linking drug use to terrorism. This is spin that makes dervishes look amateur.
[How can you tell this is NOT from mainstream media ?] |
| Feb 2, 2005 | Make Good Choices "Make the right choice about drugs," the parent tells the child, cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, wine bottle clutched in her hand.
[Until all drugs are regulated the same, the situation will never change] |
| Jan 25, 2005 | PUB LTE: Politicians Scared Of US The reason that our politicians are so afraid of the marijuana issue has more to do with attitudes to the south of us than here at home.So, you tell me, who really runs this country?
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| Jan 25, 2005 | PUB LTE: Injustice Being Done To Cannabis Activists When did sharing cannabis with friends and political supporters become "trafficking?" Though the law technically allows convictions even where no money is exchanged, there is a terrible injustice being done
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| Jan 22, 2005 | CN BC: Pot Inc. Big Businesses Have Sprung Up Around the Fuzzy Legal Boundaries of Marijuana Cultivation in Canada. Are Some Crossing The Line?.... the government is supplying roughly 1,000 people with marijuana...compassion clubs... are illegally supplying nearly 10,000
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| Jan 21, 2005 | PUB LTE: Pot Less Deadly Than Approved Drugs ...we continue to hassle those who find pain/symptom relief from medicinal cannabis. I guess we want potheads to die from FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, like the good, law-abiding citizenry does.
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| Jan 20, 2005 | CN NK: Give Us The Straight Dope Here's the irony: Hearing that marijuana is demon weed - or watching someone taken to court over selling the stuff - sends a terrible message to young people. Because when they figure out that marijuana is not so bad and then look at other warnings - that ecstasy is a potential killer on the rise in N.B.- they think, "Whatever." I know I do.
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| Jan 20, 2005 | PUB LTE: Pot Prohibition Is A Failed Social Policy Excuse me, but why are we jailing any pot growers? We should be licensing them and forcing them to pay taxes, just like every other business.
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| Jan 19, 2005 | PUB LTE: Pot Prohbition Puts Public Safety At Risk All the police hours spent busting grow-ops could have been spent finding rapists and thieves and drunk drivers. Howard J. Wooldridge, (Retired) Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, http://leap.cc/
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| Jan 17, 2005 | Pot Prohibition A Policy Flop If we needed any more proof that the war being waged against pot is futile, we got it a few days ago in a Health Canada report. The federal agency reports pot is easier to get in Canadian school yards than tobacco.
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| Jan 17, 2005 | PUB LTE: Growing Like Weed Now if they would only do something about it -- like legalize, regulate and tax.
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| Jan 14, 2005 | Drug Dog Educates The jury is in - roughly 95% of my readers say they've got no problem with a drug dog being deployed in Edmonton's senior and junior high schools...To me, police should have to have probable cause before launching any search. Otherwise we're headed for a Communist-style, police-state society where authorities have sweeping powers to randomly search your vehicle, office and home.
[Disturbing trend - we are led to believe, or it is true, there is wide acceptance of totalitarianism] |
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