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Current Affairs 2008 - Reform (80 items)
| Nov 28, 2008 | Illicit Drugs Should Be Legal, Officer Says David Bratzer and I share at least one opinion in common: That it costs us a pointless fortune to maintain the charade of having effective drug laws in Canada. ....in fact, Bratzer, a constable, is one of only two active police officers in Canada who does public speaking on behalf of the U.S.-based non-profit organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition ( LEAP ).
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| Nov 25, 2008 | City Changes Course On Hemp Bylaw Langley City council is looking to repeal a 1995 bylaw prohibiting stores from selling hemp products.
It turns out that several stores in the downtown have been carrying hemp items for years, from beauty products, clothing to hand cream and soap. Hemp beer is even sold in the provincially-run B.C. Liquor stores.
"Back then, we thought hemp was marijuana," said City Councillor Gayle Martin. She has been on council 18 years. "Now we know there is a difference between the legal and illegal stuff."
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| Nov 15, 2008 | Forget Facts, Common Sense Or Decency There's been quite a kerfuffle on the letters page recently on the legalization of marijuana.
That we're still even debating this issue, some 70 years after weed's defacto criminalization, is astounding. Every reputable government study, independent study and report out there has stated, unequivocably and for decades, that pot is marginally harmful and shouldn't be a criminal matter.
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| Nov 13, 2008 | Marijuana In Sport The use of pot by athletes does not need to be monitored any more closely than pot use by anyone else; in sports, there are much bigger drugs to smoke out.
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| Oct 29, 2008 | Stop Harassing Medical Pot Users On Monday, the Federal Court of Appeal refused to entertain a government challenge to January's Sfetkopoulos decision, in which Justice Barry Strayer of the federal court's trial division struck down the rule that a licenced grower of medical marijuana can only have one customer. "We're not persuaded [Justice Strayer] committed any error," said Justice John Evans on behalf of the three-member appeal panel, endorsing their colleague's ruling with unusual haste.
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| Oct 10, 2008 | The War On Drugs Is A Mess The World Drug Report is crude propaganda.
Journalists and politicians who take it at face value contribute to the manipulation of public opinion and the stifling of meaningful debate. And that is unacceptable at a time when Canadian soldiers are fighting and dying in the War on Drugs.
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| Oct 9, 2008 | Laws Gone To Pot A report on marijuana written by a team of world experts suggests countries interested in more rational cannabis laws simply ignore drug treaties and go their own way.
"Control regimes that criminalize users are intrusive on privacy, socially divisive and expensive. Thus, it is worth considering alternatives," says the Global Cannabis Commission Report presented in the British House of Lords last week.
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| Oct 3, 2008 | Let Them Smoke Pot The Libertarians, a party in Canada since 1973, believe the less government the better, and they were in Canmore Thursday during Marijuana Week promoting the idea that the government should get out of regulating its use by adults.
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| Sep 27, 2008 | NS: Maccan's Marijuana Maverick Enters Race AMHERST - The marijuana maverick is back to take a second crack at becoming MP for Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley.
Rick Simpson, the Maccan man who believes he has found the cure for cancer in a marijuana paste he calls hemp oil, said Friday that he filed the necessary paperwork with the riding's returning officer earlier this week.
"I'm running to get my message out," Mr. Simpson said. "I want to see lives saved and get the country on its feet and straightened out. Hemp is the answer to all our problems."
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| Sep 18, 2008 | Green With Empathy Every morning when Boris Saint-Maurice shows up for work he breaks the law. Saint-Maurice is the owner of the Compassion Club on the corner of Rachel and Coloniale - a store that sells marijuana illegally to people who can demonstrate a medical need for the drug. He has been arrested for drug trafficking numerous times.
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| Sep 12, 2008 | Medical Marijuana Users Face Continued Uncertainty Part III of a four-part series on the medical use of marijuana - Although Fewer Than 3,000 Canadians Are Licensed To Use Medical Marijuana, It's Estimated That Between 400,000 And One Million People In The Country Use Cannabis As Medication. The Following Is The Third In A Series Of Articles About The Use Of Marijuana To Treat Medical Conditions.
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| Sep 5, 2008 | Federal Election Could Be Going To Pot Legalizing The Use Of Marijuana Will Be An Election Issue If Proponents Across Canada Listen To Neil Magnuson. ....
In Lethbridge as part of the "2008 Freedom Tour" on Thursday, the long-time activist said three of the four national parties have spoken out in favour of decriminalizing the recreational drug.
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| Aug 27, 2008 | Alberta's Reefer Madness Hitting New Highs As Albertans go, they outnumber Catholics, smokers, Edmontonians, voters and overweight folk -- though a massive intake of potato chips might soon balance out the latter.
They're pot smokers, and a new study by Health Canada shows a staggering -- and presumably peckish -- 45.3% of Albertans have inhaled marijuana, with 34.7% returning for a regular hit of weed
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| Aug 20, 2008 | Is Society Benefiting From The War On Pot? By all accounts, Mike McCormick minded his own business and never hurt another soul.
He lived off the land, hunting, digging clams and cutting his own firewood. And he grew pot. Lots and lots of pot. In fact, when police stumbled across McCormick's shack in the woods behind his house, there were 243 plants growing inside it. ...Other than lawyers, who benefits from criminalizing pot smokers?
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| Aug 18, 2008 | Legislation Out Of Joint Ryan Vander Hoek hopes lighting a joint will fire up Edmonton's cannabis community.
The 22-year-old and his so-called Sunshine and Grass crew were at Louise McKinney Park yesterday, getting high and having fun.
The eight-hour cannabis festival, which was expected to draw up to 150 pot smokers, featured live music, free munchies and pot-related competitions - such as creative bong-making and fastest joint-smoking.
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| Aug 17, 2008 | Here's The Secret Every Jury Needs To Know I've got a secret to tell you. It's about jurors. Jurors called for duty on criminal cases have a secret power.
It's a secret because in a trial neither the judge nor the lawyers are allowed to tell the jurors this power exists. But it does. It's called "jury nullification."
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| Aug 8, 2008 | Futile Drug War Can't Defeat Human Nature "Prohibition is not a failure, it's a self-perpetuating policy disaster," he says. And it will remain so, well beyond the foreseeable future.
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| Aug 3, 2008 | Dumb Drug Policies Enrich Criminals The net result of our irrational drug policies is that we enrich the criminals and criminalize ordinary citizens. We control tobacco and alcohol far more effectively than we control any illegal drugs. If those are the results we want, these policies are perfect.
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| Jul 26, 2008 | The Politics Of Punishment A 2002 report commissioned by the Canadian Department of Justice on mandatory minimum jail sentences cautioned that the evidence is sparse about their deterrent effect and recognized that there are many counterproductive societal impacts.
Despite these realities, our government proposes to increase the number of crimes subject to mandatory minimum sentences, including a mandatory six months in jail for growing one marijuana plant.
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| Jul 19, 2008 | Getting Tough On The Taxpayer At issue is a new law that toughens mandatory minimum sentences for gun-related crimes. A proposed bill will do the same for anyone convicted of a long list of drug crimes, including those caught growing just one marijuana plant.
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