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Current Affairs 2007 - USA (24 items)
| Dec 1, 2007 | O Cannabis! War On Drugs Seen As Flawed Echo Of U.S. As far as ideas go, the verdict on new Tory anti-crime measures unrolled over the past couple of weeks - from people who make a living studying such things - has been unanimous.
Bad idea.
"If a person is found guilty of producing between one to 200 marijuana plants, they would face a mandatory minimum of six months in prison if the offence is committed for the purpose of trafficking, which can be: 'Hi, want to share a joint with me?'" |
| Nov 21, 2007 | Just Your Average Ganja-Growing Soccer Mom Showcase Television Helps Break More Taboos With Cult Favourite Weeds
NEXT TIME YOU light a spliff and sit in front of the tube, why not flip to a show that portrays the industry of the reefer you're enjoying?
A new phase in the presence of marijuana in the entertainment media seems to be signaled by the rising popularity of Weeds, the blazed comedy/drama carried by the cable network Showcase
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| Nov 21, 2007 | Federal Drug Plan Denounced The Conservative government's plan to slap drug dealers and marijuana grow operators with stiff sentences is a U.S.-style "war on drugs" that won't solve Canada's problems, critics warn.
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| Nov 12, 2007 | Pot Trade Slows "It's very simple," said Stephen Easton, professor of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. "Canadian marijuana production costs are met in Canadian dollars, and those are worth more now."
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| Nov 3, 2007 | Emery's Bravado May End Up Costing Him Dearly Nick Wilson's long anticipated documentary on Marc Emery, The Prince of Pot, aired on CBC Newsworld's The Lens last week, painting a very bleak picture of Emery's chances of being extradited to America to face charges brought two years ago by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
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| Oct 23, 2007 | Europeans Know Drug Abuse Is an Illness, Not a Crime Europe has a drug problem, and knows it. But the Europeans' approach to it is quite different from the North American "war on drugs."
I spend 120 days a year in Europe as a travel writer, so I decided to see for myself how it's working. I talked with locals, researched European drug policies and even visited a smoky marijuana "coffee shop" in Amsterdam. I got a close look at the alternative to a war on drugs.
Europeans are well aware of the North American track record against illegal drug use.
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| Oct 22, 2007 | Emery Case Rolls Out in Prince of Pot Doc There aren't enough adjectives in the dictionary to describe Marc Emery.
Abrasive, brash, compelling, driven . . . and that's just the beginning of the alphabet.
It's not surprising, then, that a new documentary on Emery's impending extradition hearing -- and possible life imprisonment for selling pot seeds -- is chock-full of the kind of hyperbole that vaulted him into headlines here when he was a London bookseller and political gadfly.
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| Oct 4, 2007 | Tories' War On Drugs Termed US-Style The government is embracing a U.S.-style "war on drugs" that approaches drug abuse as more of a criminal matter than a health issue, Liberal and New Democratic Party critics said yesterday.
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| Oct 3, 2007 | BC: US War Deserter Is Held After Pot Arrest In Nelson NELSON - A U.S. army deserter has been arrested in Nelson.
Robin Long, 24, was arrested by police on a countrywide warrant on Monday.
Long, who is from Ontario, was in Nelson visiting friends and staying with fellow war resisters.
But Nelson police Chief Dan Maluta said Long was arrested as a result of regular police work, not because they were targeting war resisters.
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| Sep 28, 2007 | Pot Exports Harmed By Strong Loonie The strong Canadian dollar has hit the illegal marijuana sector just as it has other industries that export to the United States, one of Canada's best known legalization advocates said Thursday.
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| Aug 9, 2007 | Why Is This Canadian Pot Dealer Campaigning for Ron Paul? He's Looking for a Pardon.
Marc Emery agrees his campaign-organizing effort for some 2008 U.S. presidential candidates is a bit unorthodox. He's Canadian, his political base of operations is the B.C. Marijuana Party in Vancouver, and he can be arrested if he sets foot into America.
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| Jul 11, 2007 | Legalizing Pot Makes Sense What's really remarkable about Canada's status as a cannabis capital is that if you were to set out looking for reasons to worry about it - -- reasons that do not amount to disliking it for its own sake -- you would have an awfully hard time finding them....That would seem to leave very little, aside from the omnipresent trade and travel considerations that come from being a neighbour of the U.S., to stand logically in the way of decriminalization.
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| Jun 15, 2007 | The Great and Costly Drug-War Fraud It is my privilege today to break major news: In less than a year, the trade in illicit drugs will be all but wiped out.Cocaine. Methamphetamine. Marijuana. All will vanish. And heroin, too. ...In 1998, the UN hosted a General Assembly special session under the official slogan: "A Drug-Free World: We Can Do It." ....
The U.S. was the main author of the first draft, and it was ambitious, saying the "eradication" of the illicit-drug trade would be complete by 2008.
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| Jun 7, 2007 | Wanted: Tokers In Suits Time For Greying Potheads To Come Out Of The Closet And Back Anti-Prohibition Battle In 1977, only 18 per cent of cannabis smokers were over the age of 30, but in 2001 the percentage shot up to 49....
Considering this changing demographic, it's surprising that our drug laws haven't been reformed and liberalized. Most people blame the looming presence of the U.S. "war on drugs," but I think we've failed on the road to rational drug law reform because aging drug users rarely come out of their smoky closets to enter the political debate.
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| Jun 4, 2007 | Missing Teen's Mom Stopped At Border Glendene Grant said she was not allowed to enter the U.S. this week as she tried to board a plane for Las Vegas. Grant was bound for the Nevada city to meet with investigators and others there about the disappearance of her daughter Jessie Foster....Grant said she has a criminal conviction for possession of a small amount of marijuana from 21 years ago, and wonders if that was the reason she was denied entry.
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| Jun 3, 2007 | Best To Stay Off U.S. Radar News item: The Washington Post, the very last U.S. newspaper to keep a correspondent in Canada, is closing the bureau. ..
"My proposed caption," wrote Beam, "would attract a lot more Yankee turistas: 'The Pot Capital of North America -- Just Minutes Away.' I'm still fuming that the newspaper didn't send me to cover Vancouver's Global Marijuana March ( 'Think Global, Smoke Local' ), which took place earlier this month."
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| May 23, 2007 | Harper To Unveil US-Style 'War On Drugs' OTTAWA - The Harper government's new anti-drug strategy is expected to take a tough approach to illicit drugs: cracking down on grow-ops and pushers, and retreating from "harm reduction" measures such as safe injection sites for addicts.
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| Apr 25, 2007 | A Few Trips Decades Ago Put An End To This One Mr. Feldmar took his last hit of acid in 1974.
Thirty-two years, however, turned out to be but an instant in the long, unrelenting U.S. war on drugs. Last summer, in an incident that has just come to light, Mr. Feldmar, now 66, was banned from entering the United States because of his long-ago use of LSD.
Because Mr. Feldmar had never been charged with possession of the once-popular illegal drug, privacy advocates are even more alarmed by the way U.S. border guards at the busy Peace Arch crossing near Vancouver found out about it.
The guards simply looked up Mr. Feldmar on the Internet and discovered his own article about using LSD, written for the scholarly, peer-reviewed journal Janus Head. ...
Given the United States' "almost fanatical position on drugs," Mr. Oscapella said, even a teenager who simply writes in a blog about smoking marijuana is now vulnerable to online scrutiny by U.S. border guards.
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| Mar 3, 2007 | Recreational Drugs Should Be Legalized Author: Laurie Cook, MD
Society does not criminalize alcohol consumption. Previous attempts to do so resulted in widespread disregard for the law and generated criminal empires. And these attempts did not work. Smokers are not criminals and the government aggressively promotes gambling. Both activities are widely accepted to be harmful and addicting. What about gasoline, hairspray and glue? All are used to "get high."
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| Feb 22, 2007 | Canada Must Not Follow The U.S. On Drug Policy The U.S. drug czar, John Walters, is in Ottawa today, trying his best to put a positive spin on one of the greatest disasters in U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Part of his agenda is to persuade Canada to follow in U.S. footsteps, which can only happen if Canadians ignore science, compassion, health and human rights.
The United States ranks first in the world in per-capita incarceration, with roughly five per cent of the earth's population but 25 per cent of the total incarcerated population. Russia and China simply can't keep up. Among the 2.2 million people behind bars today in the United States, roughly half a million are locked up for drug-law violations, and hundreds of thousands more for other "drug-related" offences. The U.S. "war on drugs" costs at least $40 billion U.S. a year in direct costs, and tens of billions more in indirect costs.
It's all useful information for Canadians to keep in mind when being encouraged to further toughen their drug laws to bring them in line with those of the United States.
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