Current Affairs (2007) -
Chronological (432 items)
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| Feb 21, 2007 |
Hemp Shop Owner Delays Plan To Open Medicinal Room A Saskatchewan hemp shop owner says he will delay opening a smoking room for medical marijuana users until he knows if it's legal. Dean Foster, who owns Field of Dreams in Regina, had planned to open what he calls a marijuana "inhalation room" last week and even sent out flyers advertising memberships. |
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| Feb 21, 2007 |
PUB LTE: It Won't Work hate to rain on your parade, but more citizens reporting each other to the police for growing cannabis will not improve the situation. ( You can help, Feb. 14 ). The police do not lack intelligence -- so to speak. The number of growing operations reported to police in B.C. is increasing by about 48 per cent per year, outpacing efforts to investigate and close them down. According to the RCMP, the national annual seizure average is about 1,300,000 plants. This translates into an annual production estimate ranging between 1,070 and 2,676 metric tonnes of herbal cannabis. Only 51 tonnes were seized in 2005, or less than two per cent of the harvest. As with wolves and their prey, police predation merely culls out the weak. |
| Feb 21, 2007 |
PUB LTE: Make It Legal Merritt's hazardous marijuana grow operations are a direct result of marijuana prohibition. Legitimate farmers do not steal electricity to grow produce in the basements of rented homes. If legal, growing marijuana would be less profitable then farming tomatoes. As it stands, the drug war distorts market forces such that an easily grown weed is literally worth its weight in gold. Rather than continue to subsidize organized crime, Canadian policymakers should ignore the reefer madness hysteria of the U.S. government and instead to to look their own Senate for guidance. In the words of Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, "Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue." |
| 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. |
| Mar 2, 2007 |
Cannabis Studies by Condition Just in the last five years alone, we counted more than 12 studies that reported in the media the possible effectiveness of marijuana in treating such debilitating conditions as: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n269/a02.html?322560 [Not Canadian content, but good outline of recent medical studies] |
| Mar 2, 2007 |
Hemp, Flax Could Be Used To Build Your Next Vehicle Auto manufacturers could be just three years away from replacing some of the plastics used in cars with compounds made from hemp, canola oil and flax fibres, says one of Canada's top auto engineers. And the changes could significantly reduce dependence on oil, Peter Frise said Thursday. |
| Mar 2, 2007 |
New Bid To Start Hemp Plant In Dauphin Manitoba - FOR the second time in almost 10 years, efforts are underway to develop a multimillion-dollar hemp processing plant in Dauphin. Parkland BioFibres Ltd. is looking to build a $14-million raw industrial hemp processing operation to make building insulation. The 50 members of the Parklands Industrial Hemp Growers Co-Op have committed $2 million to the project and promoters are seeking another $3.3 million from private investors. |
| 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." |
| Mar 5, 2007 |
Put Pot Growers Behind Bars, Court Of Appeal Tells Judge The B.C. Court of Appeal has told lower court judges that pot growers should be jailed to buttress the anti-marijuana law. In a significant unanimous ruling that tries to address vexing questions raised by judges dealing with pot offenders, a three-judge panel unanimously ordered a 12-month jail term for a Courtenay man with no criminal record who was caught growing dope for profit. |
| Mar 6, 2007 |
More Young People Smoke Pot Than Tobacco, Survey Finds Average Age Of First Marijuana Use Is 14.7 Years, Compared To 13.9 Years For Tobacco And 14.1 Years For Alcohol A Vancouver Coastal Health survey has found that most youth in Vancouver start smoking marijuana before their 15th birthday, not long after their first whiff of tobacco or sip of beer.... The city-wide survey of youth aged 16 to 24 shows cannabis sativa is the illicit drug of first choice for today's young people.... Almost seven out of every 10 of those surveyed ( 68 per cent ) said they had tried marijuana at least once.... That climbs to a whopping 80 per cent for those aged 19 to 24, suggesting that just 20 per cent of the city's younger residents have never experimented with the illegal plant.... Overall, 54 per cent of all those surveyed told researchers they had used marijuana during the past year. |
| Mar 7, 2007 |
BC Must Protect Grow Op Kids - Social Workers Last December, Alberta passed the Drug-Endangered Children Act, which establishes that having kids in a grow op or meth lab environment can be considered abuse. An association representing social workers in this province said similar guidelines are needed here. [It is a very dangerous precedent to term something "child abuse" when it could be nothing of the sort] |
| Mar 8, 2007 |
OPP Busts Huge Marijuana Factory Ontario Provincial Police said they seized 3,100 marijuana plants in varying stages of growth, along with nearly $700,000 in lighting, and electrical and building equipment, after executing a search warrant on the former Nordik Imperial Mushroom Farm, at 1454 Highway 138, on Tuesday. |
| Mar 9, 2007 |
Toking Up To Feel Better Not Accepted As The offender's toking finally caught up with him yesterday when members of the National Parole Board rejected his pitch that marijuana helped him chill out and actually cut the chances he might commit more violent assaults. [A classic case of stupidity and ignorance winning out over common sense. Cannabis reduces rage, and society in general would be more peaceful if we were rid of pot prohibition.] |
| Mar 9, 2007 |
A Futile War On Marijuana Grow-ops are dangerous because they're clandestine, not because there's something intrinsically hazardous about the plants in them. The only reason for chasing them down, at root, is a prohibitionary approach toward marijuana that we don't apply to alcohol or nicotine. The war on pot is futile. It's long since time to declare a ceasefire. |
| Mar 9, 2007 |
Toking Up To Feel Better Not Accepted As Medical Need A group of 1,492 Canadians -- 21 per cent of them in B.C. -- are allowed to get high every day for medical reasons. But as much as Brian Riches might like to be, the inmate isn't among them. The offender's toking finally caught up with him yesterday when members of the National Parole Board rejected his pitch that marijuana helped him chill out and actually cut the chances he might commit more violent assaults. [Ignorance about cannabis and societal stupidity ruin lives] |
| Mar 11, 2007 |
It's Long Past Time We Legalized It BRITISH COLUMBIA is fast becoming the only province in Canada in which the biggest industry is illegal. In 2005, forestry ( $ 10 million ) was B. C.'s top economic driver, and construction ( $ 7.9 billion ) ranked second. But what was this, coming up fast on the inside to move into third place? The marijuana industry. Puff, puff. With annual sales of $ 7.5 billion, it was worth more than the combined total of hotels and restaurants ( $ 3.8 billion ) and mining, oil and gas ( $ 3.5 billion ). Construction now booms as never before in B. C., but that won't stop the pot trade from steaming into second spot. After that, forestry industry, watch your behind. " The amount of marijuana produced each year in British Columbia," said a 2005 study by the University College of Fraser Valley, " is estimated to have increased from 19,729 kilos in 1997 to 79,817 in 2003." |
| Mar 13, 2007 |
Teens Choosing Rehab Over Suspension A Program Aimed At Providing Day Treatment For School Aged Youth Faced With Drug Related Suspensions Is Doing Better Than Anticipated. With this group, Lawrance said, those students who choose to participate can reduce their overall suspension time. [Most treatment programs are usually coerced treatment, but that isn't mentioned when we hear about all the youth seeking treatment for their pot use...] |
| Mar 13, 2007 |
PUB LTE: Taxes Wasted On A Non-winable Drug War Re: One man charged after Lake Louise drug bust ( March 6 Crag & Canyon ) Why are they wasting funds keeping this person in jail? He is not charged with a violent crime that would require he stays locked up. When will we stop wasting huge tax dollar resources on the failed and non-winable drug war? Use the wasted funds on organized crime issues instead of a low level street dealer that will be replaced by another before he even was taken away to jail. I guess we want to model the USA. 1980 50,000 citizens in jail, today over 500,000 in US jails. Private big business in the USA locking up people for non violent crimes. Easier for big business to manage the non violent people equals more easy profits for big business on the tax payers backs of course. KEITH FAGIN |
| Mar 13, 2007 |
Alleged Trafficker Reels As $2.9 Million Vanishes During its three-year investigation of the Italian Mafia in Montreal, the RCMP secretly broke into cars, homes and safes of alleged drug dealers and bookmakers, seizing millions of dollars in cash and sowing dissent and confusion among gangsters that almost led to a homicide. On the night of Sept. 14, 2006, the RCMP, acting on a search warrant, broke into a Laval home belonging to the parents of a suspected drug trafficker and seized $2.9 million. |
| Mar 14, 2007 |
Pushing Out Pot Farmers Marijuana grow ops are no joke in the Tri-Cities, where hardly a week goes by without a bust or a raid. And area residents are increasingly at risk of being in the line of fire when criminals try to steal from criminals. ...1) Even so, most Coquitlam residents would probably put public safety over individual rights if it would make their neighbourhoods safer. ...2) But until someone comes up with a better idea, this get-tough, search-and-seizure program is the best tool cities have to push pot farmers out. [1) Warning lights should go off when someone tries to convince us to give up more privacy rights for public safety... 2) Many good solutions and better ideas have been suggested, but they fall on deaf ears] |