Current Affairs (2006) -
Hemp (313 items)
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| Mar 1, 2006 |
RCMP Close Montreal Marijuana Seed Vendor Although the Montreal-based company Heaven's Stairway has operated brazenly since 1998 and is currently listed on Quebec's business registry, the RCMP announced Tuesday it has shut it down. The RCMP described the large-scale bust as the first of its kind in Canada. Besides evoking Led Zeppelin's signature song for its name the company also sold seeds with quirky labels like Crippy Bud and Deep Blue Rush. [ By attacking the very source - seeds - they may merely be preparing for when the time comes for cannabis to be legal. With all other avenues effectively shut down, corporations like Monsanto will emerge as the main distributer of seeds. (Who is really ordering the raids on seeds??? ) ] |
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| Mar 3, 2006 |
AIDS Victim Gets His Marijuana Back A Regina Medical Marijuana User Has His Plants Back. Tom Shapiro was at police headquarters Thursday afternoon collecting the 21 marijuana plants that were seized by officers last month following a delay in the renewal of his licence to grow pot. Shapiro arrived at the station armed with a court order for police to return the property to him. [Why did a sick and suffering Canadian have to go through any legal repercussions in the first place? Where is the outrage?] |
| Mar 8, 2006 |
Up To 200 Acres To Be Seeded In Hemp By the end of the Industrial Hemp Steering Committee meeting March 6, the members had reached a conclusion on how to direct their efforts. "We are going to focus on grain for our first year; nutritional supplements, the oils and those types of things," Mayor Donna Barnett, the commmittee chair, said. [Hemp will be one of the most important crops in the post-oil world, and Canada is in a great position to be a leading producer] |
| Mar 9, 2006 |
Dopey RCMP Math Following a 14-month investigation, RCMP officers recently uncovered a clandestine cyber cartel selling marijuana seeds via the Internet. Seven persons were subsequently charged with a variety of cannabis-related offences. Trumpeting this latest victory against the "scourge of marijuana" -- their term -- the Mounties claimed that the amount of seeds they seized would fill 500 greenhouses, each with 400 plants, representing 42 million joints on the street. |
| Mar 10, 2006 |
Keep Marching, Pot Crusader Says Goodwin, owner of the Up In Smoke cafe, was arrested Wednesday and charged with possession and possession for the purpose of trafficking. It's his latest run-in with Hamilton police, who he says have visited his business more than 300 times since he opened it in August 2004 on King Street East. [ Cannabis activists and consumers take another hit] |
| Mar 10, 2006 |
PUB LTE: Seedy Situation SEEDY SITUATION Montreal -- I was a little confused reading Charlie McKenzie's article on the RCMP marijuana-seed bust and I wasn't even high at the time ( Dopey RCMP Math -- March 9 ). Was the point that the RCMP should stop wasting its time trying to determine how much marijuana a bag of seeds would yield? Or was the point that the RCMP should stop wasting its time pandering to U.S. drug hysteria? Haven't we all had enough of this silly prohibition, of clogging the court system and saddling people with criminal records? Weed is a wonderful, useful little plant. Our overworked police forces should be focusing on other things. MICHAEL ASHBY director, National Pardon Centre |
| Mar 11, 2006 |
Freedom And Pot As Don Martin noted in this newspaper yesterday, 600,000 Canadians are currently saddled with criminal convictions for their use of a relatively harmless substance -- a serious matter for anyone attempting to travel outside the country. [Since the early 90's we have heard that 600,000 Canadians have criminal convictions for pot. Today that number is really closer to 1.5 million] |
| Mar 15, 2006 |
US Study Declares Canada Drug Haven While the American government's annual international narcotics review pegs the country as "primarily a drug consuming" one, Canada remains a significant producer of high-quality marijuana and a transit point for over-the-counter pharmaceuticals used in synthetic drugs. [The rest of the world should treat these US reports as nothing more than an a good laugh...] |
| Mar 20, 2006 |
PUB LTE: Marijuana Not A Gateway To Harder Stuff The Czech Republic is the only nation in the world where adult citizens can legally use, possess and grow small quantities of marijuana. ( In the Netherlands, marijuana is quasi-legal -- not officially legal. ) The Czech overall drug arrest rate is one per 100,000 population. The United States' overall drug arrest rate is 585 per 100,000 population. The Czech robbery rate is two per 100,000 population. The United States' robbery rate is 145.9 per 100,000 population, according to the FBI. According to our drug war cheerleaders, tolerant marijuana laws cause people to use other, much more dangerous drugs, like meth and heroin. Obviously, this doesn't happen in the Czech Republic. Why not? |
| Mar 20, 2006 |
Canada's Growing Marijuana Problem "Cannabis is the biggest issue facing law enforcement now," says Inspector Paul Nadeau of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ( RCMP ). [Too bad identify theft, break and enter and other crimes that citizens would consider the biggest problems for them aren't also where the police put their resources] |
| Mar 20, 2006 |
PUB LTE: Don't Blame US Canadians should be incensed that the U.S. government is pointing fingers at us and other countries as the cause of its drug problems. The spread of disease, death, violence and organized crime is a consequence of prohibitionist drug policies that the U.S. government originally strong-armed other countries into adopting. <br> Gillian Maxwell <br> Chair, Keeping the Door Open: Dialogues on Drug Use |
| Mar 21, 2006 |
Desperate For A Home, People Snap Up Grow-ops CALGARY - Calgary's red-hot real-estate market is so frenzied people are lining up for condemned houses that were used as drug operations. [Or maybe people don't believe all the hype about former grow ops being more unhealthy than homes that had regular indoor gardens] |
| Mar 22, 2006 |
Hemps Future Bright Say Proponents Currently, there are roughly 300 acres of commercial hemp grown in Ontario produced by about 10 growers said Gordon Scheifele, president of the provincial organization. That's considerably less than the 8,000 to 10,000 acres produced annually in Manitoba but he says the progress on acceptance of the crop is right on target. |
| Mar 27, 2006 |
Victoria Mayor Offers Support To Medical Pot Users Victoria's mayor has thrown his support behind local medicinal pot users and called upon Health Canada to conduct an immediate review of how it provides medical marijuana to Canadians. A presentation to council by local compassion clubs last month prompted Alan Lowe to draft a letter to federal Health Minister Tony Clement criticizing public access to the Federal Marijuana Medical Access Regulation program. |
| Mar 28, 2006 |
$10m Of Pot Worth Six Years In Prison He's gone from carpenter to drug exporter, and now Daren Wayne Smith will be a federal inmate for his role in an unprecedented scheme that saw in excess of $10 million worth of marijuana pass through Saskatchewan's borders. |
| Mar 29, 2006 |
Judge Acquits Accused Toker A man accused of toking and driving was found not guilty yesterday after a judge found there was no way to assess the effect pot might have had on the man. |
| Mar 30, 2006 |
Marijuana Advocate Loses Case, Hit With Fine Mr. Turmel, a professional gambler and a medicinal marijuana advocate, was fined $1,000, given three years probation and told to perform 100 hours of community service after he was found guilty of a 2003 offence of possessing marijuana for the purpose of trafficking. |
| Apr 1, 2006 |
It All Tastes Good at This Pot Cafe Hot Box Cafe 191A Baldwin St., Toronto, 416-203-6990. Dinner for two with tax and tip, $30. What is a restaurant critic doing covering a marijuana cafe? If a Kensington spot lets people smoke wacky tobaccy on its premises, that isn't my purview. Until they start serving food. |
| Apr 3, 2006 |
Former Police Chief Critical of Harper's Drug Move The former chief of the Seattle police, Norm Stamper, was in Calgary lifting weights in a hotel gym on Monday, at the same time as Canada's conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, appeared on television in a live broadcast of his speech to the Canadian Professional Police Association's meeting in Ottawa. |
| Apr 6, 2006 |
Medical Marijuana Company Heralds Its Public Offering TORONTO -- It's not every company that heralds its public debut with Moses Znaimer, the co-founder of CityTV, on one side and a bag of marijuana from the Canadian government on the other. But that's exactly how Cannasat Therapeutics Inc. did it Wednesday. Cannasat bills itself as one of a handful of companies in the world that is researching and developing medicines derived from cannabis plants. [A development to watch...] |