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Current Affairs 2008 - Activism (142 items)
| Jan 25, 2008 | The Pot Circus Comes to the Courthouse First the cops took their pot.
Now they want to take their church.
Weed worshippers Walter Tucker and Michael Baldasaro, reverends in the Church of the Universe, were served yesterday with an application by the attorney general to forfeit the Barton Street building the brothers call both home and church. The AG is going after the house worth about $98,000 as "offence-related property" since Tucker and Baldasaro were convicted of selling $70 worth of marijuana to an undercover police officer.
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| Jan 22, 2008 | Plea Bargain Talks Expected To Delay Emery Extradition Extradition proceedings against Marc Emery, Vancouver's self-styled Prince of Pot, were postponed Monday.
The B.C. Supreme Court put the hearing over until today. The proceedings were expected to be further adjourned until Feb. 6 while a plea bargain is negotiated.
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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 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 | 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 9, 2008 | The Prince of Pot Deserves B.C. Support Emery is scheduled for an extradition hearing Jan. 21. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency wants to take him across the border and try him on charges relating to the marijuana seed business he ran flagrantly and successfully in Vancouver for years.
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| 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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| 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 2, 2008 | Open Letter to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson Dear Mr. Nicholson: On Jan. 21, 2008 an extradition hearing will begin in Vancouver for Marc Emery, Canada's pre-eminent activist for the legalization of marijuana. Marc has been charged in the U.S. with conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana, and conspiring to launder money. If convicted under U.S. law, he faces possible life imprisonment without parole.
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| AB: Pot Activist Loses Bid To Have Charges Stayed CALGARY ( CNS ) -A medical marijuana activist has lost his bid to have drug-trafficking charges against him stayed in Alberta -- his second judicial setback in less than a week.
Grant Krieger was looking for a constitutional exemption on Wednesday from his marijuana trafficking conviction, arguing his actions were protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Alberta Court of Appeal rejected Mr. Krieger's bid.
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