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Current Affairs 2008 - Top Rated (37 items)
| Mar 17, 2008 | The Dope Rush Think of drugs, and you think of Colombia, Thailand, Afghanistan. But Canada? Nice, peaceful, dull Canada? Believe it or not, there are parts of the country where cannabis provides more jobs than logging, mining, oil and gas combined. Misha Glenny investigates, in the first of two extracts from his new book on organised crime
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| Mar 5, 2008 | Hell, A Handbasket And Tougher Drug Laws Eugene Oscapella is a criminologist who teaches at the University of Ottawa. He dresses like a modern academic hipster: short leather jacket, blue shirt, dark tie, grey strides. He is also a lawyer who is sharp on the subject of drug policy. He was in town recently, speaking to front-line health and harm-reduction workers about the perils of the government's proposed crime legislation.
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| Feb 22, 2008 | War On Drugs Is Blowing Up In Our Faces, Expert Warns Oscapella is absolutely convinced that the prohibition of drugs is "the most significant failing of the criminal justice system of the 20th, and now, 21st centuries." ...
On this 100th anniversary of prohibition, maybe we have to ask ourselves, are we addicted to prohibition?
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| Feb 21, 2008 | Government Policy Keeps Couple Apart When MUN student Kirsten Joy moved in with her boyfriend Mike Dawe, she thought it would be forever.
But a year down the line, a government policy forced her to pack her bags and move across town, when she got a letter warning that she was not allowed to receive two forms of income support at once.
Joy receives a full student loan and Dawe collects government aid because he has a rare and debilitating genetic disorder called Marfan Syndrome, which affects his body's joints, connective tissues, and heart. ..."I really don't consider a student loan a form of income because it is something that I have to pay back," said Joy.
[Bureaucracy at it's finest] |
| Feb 20, 2008 | Vancouver Police Raid The Herb School and Arrest Activist David Malmo-Levine The Vancouver Police raided the Vancouver Herb School, arresting David Malmo-Levine and others. Malmo-Levine was taken into custody at 12:30pm Pacific time, and charges are pending for Trafficking, Possession for the Purpose of Trafficking, and (possibly) Possession of Paraphernalia. He will be kept in custody overnight. Lawyer Kirk Tousaw has been secured to represent Malmo-Levine tomorrow morning.
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| Feb 18, 2008 | 100 Years Of Sobriety In Vancouver In 1923, without debate or discussion, it was announced that "there is a new drug in the schedule," and the use, sale, and possession of marijuana was made illegal, largely for fear that Mexican migrants and Negro jazz musicians would use it to seduce white women. It was understood that the laws would not be applied to the white populace.
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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 | 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 1, 2008 | Understanding the Motivations for Recreational This exploratory qualitative research seeks to better understand both the motives for the
use of marijuana by adult Canadians* and their learned "drug experience" expectancies
through an examination of their subjective experiences with the drug. This neglected area
of research has implications for drug consumption prevention educators and treatment
counselors, particularly those who are wary of "statistical reductionism" and sensitive to
the clinical value of gaining an understanding of the subjective experiences of those who
use and misuse drugs (Feinstein, 1999).
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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 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 | 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 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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