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Current Affairs 2008 - Legal (184 items)
| Jan 19, 2008 | Local Federal Crown Backs Out of Trials In Dispute Over Pay Grace said federal prosecutions were taking 40 per cent of his time but generating only 10 per cent of his income. With the increase, he'll spend 20 per cent of his time dealing with federal matters and the rest as a defence lawyer, he said.
Grace said there seems to be more longer trials, due to an increase in the number of marijuana grow operations in the area. They often involve multiple accused and multiple lawyers.
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| Jan 18, 2008 | Condo huff: Don't Fear The Reefer Erin is a medical user of marijuana...She is also licensed to grow a little dope at home, with the permission of the government. I think that makes the condo corporation nervous. ...She is growing 18 marijuana plants - that's all she needs - in what used to be the closet of her bedroom.
[What will they do when more and more people begin growing vegetables indoors at home to help offset rising food costs?] |
| 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 | Plenty O' Pot News Lawyers for the Vancouver Island Compassion Society ( VICS ) will be back in court in February to defend the organization's constitutional right to distribute medical cannabis, despite the death of the judge who was presiding over the now two-year-old trial.
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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 | SN: Ruling Disappoints Medical Pot Producer Health Canada's contract producer for medicinal marijuana fears patient safety and product quality will suffer as a result of a federal court ruling that relaxes government restrictions and allows other growers to become suppliers.
[ Product quality???? See; Organic Cannabis vs Health Canada product ] |
| 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 | Marc Emery Agrees to Five Years in Canadian Prison Marc Emery, Vancouver's self-styled Prince of Pot, has tentatively agreed to a five-year prison term in a plea bargain over U.S. money laundering and marijuana seed-selling charges.
Facing an extradition hearing Jan. 21 and the all-but-certain prospect of delivery to American authorities, Emery has cut a deal with U.S. prosecutors to serve his sentence in Canada. He also hopes it will save his two co-accused - Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams, who were his lieutenants for so much of the past decade.
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| Jan 14, 2008 | Island Company To Sell Medical Marijuana To Hundreds Of People Duncan company is gearing up to supply nearly 300 customers with medical marijuana in the wake of a federal court ruling striking down a key restriction on sales of the drug.
Island Harvest applauded the decision to declare unconstitutional a regulation that had prevented growers from selling marijuana to more than one patient.
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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 | BC: Driving High As the Counterattack Road Check season winds down, Saanich police were surprised by one memorable night that saw the number of drivers caught driving while high on marijuana exceed those caught for drinking and driving.
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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 7, 2008 | Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Property Seizure The Supreme Court of Canada will scrutinize Ontario's Civil Remedies Act after granting a Toronto-area man leave to appeal an Ontario Court of Appeal decision that backed the seizure of his property.
Police found Robin Chatterjee in 2003 in a vehicle, carrying $29,020 in cash and equipment often used in marijuana grow operations, but he was not charged.
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| Jan 4, 2008 | A Matter of National Sovereignty On Dec. 31, the National Post comment pages published an open letter by columnist Karen Selick that asked Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to intervene in the extradition process against "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery, which is scheduled to begin Jan. 21.
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| Jan 3, 2008 | Job Drug-Testing Debate Not Over A court ruling against a fired marijuana user won't stop the province's human rights commission seeking changes to workplace drug-testing policies, a lawyer on the case said yesterday.
"I think automatic termination is troubling because you're denying someone employment," said Arman Chak, an Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission lawyer who represented the fired worker, John Chiasson, during a recent court case.
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