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Current Affairs 2008 - Reform (80 items)
| Feb 18, 2008 | War Of Words - Marijuana Pro- In the end, I think the best reason to end prohibition is because prohibition is not just the War on Drugs, it's a war on regular citizens. Prohibition is an attack against our freedom of choice, and our freedom of control over our own bodies. Canada is a progressive nation, and as a progressive nation, I like to think that Canada avoids war whenever possible; even when the war is against drugs.
Against -What many don't seem to realize, however, is that legalizing pot, or any drug for that matter, has very little positives. Legalization means that more people would become far more likely to experiment with drugs, and that definitely is not a good thing.
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| Feb 14, 2008 | Drug Laws Rooted In Class Control We tend to take the law for granted, but sometimes its origins deserve a little thought.
For example, it's something of a puzzle why certain narcotics were seen as dangerous and criminalized in the early 20th century when before 1908, there were few restrictions placed on the sale or consumption of narcotics.
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| Feb 11, 2008 | Medical Marijuana Advocates Cry Foul Today, discussion about reforming the country's marijuana laws is not on the political landscape. If anything, the country is moving in the opposite direction.
The government of Stephen Harper has ruled out any changes to the law, and during a visit to marijuana-friendly Vancouver last week, Liberal leader Stephane Dion said his party is not going to advocate for the end of criminal sanctions for possession...
As well, almost 45,000 criminal charges for simple possession continue to be laid each year, up nearly 20% from a decade ago.
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| Feb 11, 2008 | Let's Hope These Cops Now Have The Message I can't recall the last reported incident of a shootout or police death during a raid on a B.C. grow-op.
And yet coroner statistics show that, since 1992, 267 citizens have lost their lives in B.C. during police-related incidents.
One involved the death of a young man with a channel-changer in his hand. Police who burst into his living room fired, thinking he had a gun.
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| Feb 9, 2008 | NS: He's 'A Healer, Not A Dealer' AMHERST - A Maccan-area man who insists he has found the cure for cancer says he is leaving Canada for an unnamed country where he can live without fear of persecution or prosecution for taking and producing medicinal marijuana.
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| Feb 9, 2008 | Behind The Toronto Police Scandal Years Of Investigation Went Into A Case That, Thanks To Judge's Ruling, May Never Go To Trial
Dozens of police officers under suspicion. A million pages of documents. Thousands of interviews. Hundreds of criminal charges. Easily the worst scandal in Toronto police history.
And then it fell apart.
Charges were stayed because the prosecutors took too long in handing over the mountain of evidence to the defence.
[An definitive work on this subject] |
| Feb 6, 2008 | ON: Rights body grants hearing to joint smoker An Ontario man who was told he was not allowed to smoke medical marijuana outside a local sports bar has been granted a hearing at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, one of the first cases of its kind in Canadian history.
Steve Gibson, a father of two, is claiming he was discriminated against because of his disability after he was barred from Gator Ted's Tap and Grill in Burlington, Ont., in May, 2005, for smoking marijuana by the restaurant's front door.
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| Jan 31, 2008 | Carousel Harvest Appeal [PDF] The Crown is appealing the ruling that allows medical cannabis growers to grow for more than one patient. For more background, see:
Ottawa Loses Marijuana Fight
Federal Court strikes down regulation limiting growers of medical marijuana
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| Jan 18, 2008 | Constitutional Pot Challenge In Sechelt Provincial Court BC: The local courtroom is taking centre stage in a constitutional showdown on laws governing the possession of marijuana, after a written submission from Vancouver lawyer Kirk Tousaw on Tuesday.
Tousaw and Ryan Poelzer, an East Vancouver man charged with possession of marijuana on the Coast in late May, are pursuing a constitutional defence based on the non-viability of Health Canada's 2003 Marijuana Medical Access Regulation ( MMAR ).
"The courts have found, as recently as Jan. 2008, the MMAR is not constitutionally adequate," said Tousaw. "It's clear that the government can only prohibit possession of marijuana if it has a constitutionally adequate medical program."
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| Jan 17, 2008 | Extraditing The Prince Of Pot Many Canadians will be tuning in to witness the fate of self-proclaimed "Prince of Pot" and marijuana seed distributor Marc Emery. Since Harper took office, $64 million has been pledged in the anti-drug fight... A UN study released in 2007 estimated Canadian pot use is four times that of the global rate and the highest in the industrialized world,..Economics professors at the Fraser Institute estimate Canadians will spend $1.8 billion this year on marijuana,
Latest News: Extradition Hearing Adjourned - A press conference will take place at the BC Supreme Court at 800 Smithe Street, downtown Vancouver, at 10:00am on Tuesday, January 22nd. www.NoExtradition.net
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| Jan 17, 2008 | Pot Decision A Good Step Good for Judge Barry Strayer.
Most have probably not heard of the man, but he's the Ontario federal court judge whose recent ruling allows the sick among us to more easily obtain marijuana for medicinal purposes.
No matter your stance on the issue of pot, the facts are it helps many deal with symptoms of diseases and live decidedly more normal lives temporarily free of chronic pain.
About 2,000 Canadians carry prescriptions allowing them to legally purchase the intoxicating weed.
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| Jan 16, 2008 | BC: Door Opened For Large-Scale Pot Growing Cowichan could become one of Canada's medical cannabis capitals following last week's federal-court ruling allowing growers to supply more than one patient.
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| Jan 16, 2008 | Weeding Out Bad Policy Pretending that marijuana possesses magic evil qualities that make it more dangerous than a thousand other substances our laws permit doctors to prescribe, from Ritalin to morphine, hurts physicians and their patients.
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| Jan 16, 2008 | Drug Policy Wimps What a bunch of hypocrites our politicians are. Pot is illegal in this country but Ottawa couldn't muster up the effort to close down our most infamous marijuana activist.
It's essentially an admission that our pot laws are ridiculous but we don't have the guts to reform them, despite repeated pleas by various bodies over the years.
By turning a blind eye to Emery's activities, Ottawa has implicitly acknowledged that marijuana use is not a big deal. It's no wonder that, as the Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs noted in 2002, the gap between the law and public compliance has widened.
After all, if Ottawa can't be bothered prosecuting a big fish like Emery, why should ordinary Canadians respect the law?
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| Jan 16, 2008 | This Is Your Law On Drugs In presenting the government's anti-drug plan in October, Prime Minister Stephen Harper never called it a "War on Drugs." But he talked tough about "breaking Canada's drug habit," and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson punctuated that sentiment by proposing a bill aimed at invoking mandatory jail sentences for drug offenders. Immediately, critics sounded off on what they saw as a host of inherent flaws in the government's whole approach to illicit drugs. One common strain of criticism pointed out that this is a familiar strategy once embraced by American policy-makers.
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| Jan 15, 2008 | B.C.'s Prince of Pot Got What Was Coming to Him Still, Mr. Emery is anything but a sympathetic figure. In truth, the pot activist is a smart-ass egomaniac addicted as much to the fame and attention his marijuana crusade has brought him as he is to the B.C. Bud he likes to smoke so much.
We can condemn U.S. drug laws as unduly harsh all we want, but the fact is they are the laws. And when we are in that country, or doing business with people who live there, we must respect those laws. If you decide to thwart them, as Mr. Emery did, you do so at your peril.
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| Jan 14, 2008 | Be Compassionate But a compassion club is nothing but a grow-op that complies with the law, pays its bills, lives openly in the community and causes no harm to anybody. And once you concede that such a thing can exist, and others demonstrate it, the whole semantic game of drug prohibition becomes harder for the government to play.
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| Jan 10, 2008 | Federal Court strikes down regulation limiting growers of medical marijuana Ottawa Loses Marijuana Fight : The federal government lost another court challenge to its controversial medical marijuana program, and now has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the ruling that declared one of its key policies unconstitutional.
Under the current set of regulations, licensed producers are only allowed to grow the drug for one patient at a time. Federal Court Judge Barry Strayer said that the one-to-one ratio violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The decision, the latest in a string of court cases, will essentially mean more choice for approved medical marijuana users and should provide easier access for them to the drug.
The Decision is posted here Carasel Harvest decision |
| Jan 8, 2008 | Why Is Canada Copying Failure? Author: Larry Campbell: Is there really anyone anywhere in Canada who believes that U.S. drug policies are working? Or that they are deserving of being copied here?
This is the direction Prime Minister Stephen Harper would have us go.
More prisons and more people in prisons has not worked for our southern neighbours, and there is no logic behind the move to increase criminal penalties for drugs.
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| The Growing Use Of Medical 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 first article in a series about the use of marijuana to treat medical conditions.
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