Current Affairs (2007) -
Chronological (432 items)
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| Oct 6, 2007 |
What's Harper Smoking? Stephen Harper's announcement Thursday of a new national drug strategy served at least one valuable purpose: It conclusively demonstrated that the prime minister knows nothing about drugs or drug policy. The list of misinformed, misleading or nonsensical statements uttered by Mr. Harper is long and this space short, so let me skip quickly to the highlights. |
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| Oct 9, 2007 |
Pot Holes In Harper's Drug Policy What really irks me is the fact that possession and/or distribution of marijuana also falls under this new law. I'm all for the legalization, not decriminalization, of pot. I believe that this is one illegal substance that should not be categorized along with other, more serious drugs. |
| Oct 9, 2007 |
Reefer Madness Studies have suggested that as many as 1 in 4 cannabis users may be genetically at risk for developing schizophrenia or a related psychotic disorder. Now, a new study reveals all users are at risk.[1] [Reefer Madness at its best] |
| Oct 11, 2007 |
Marijuana Party Candidate Gets Three Months For Trafficking VANCOUVER - Former Marijuana Party candidate Marc Boyer has been sentenced to three months in jail after pleading guilty in Vancouver Provincial Court to possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking. |
| Oct 11, 2007 |
Great Hemp Hope Is Barrie Farmer's Hemp Oil The Key To The Future Of Ontario Agriculture? "Rope, not dope" was my slogan some years back, when I was involved in a successful campaign ( yes, we do win some battles ) to legalize industrial hemp in Canada. My eye was on the 25,000 industrial products hemp was thought to offer, a farm-friendly, pesticide-free, green source for everything from clothing to rope to paper to plastic. |
| Oct 12, 2007 |
Canada Chooses Cannabis, Not So High On Steroids Of the tiny numbers of Canadian athletes who test positive, it's more likely to be for cannabis than anything truly sinister. |
| Oct 14, 2007 |
OPP Officer Charged Following Drug Raid A longtime local OPP officer, now working in northern Ontario, is charged following a drug raid by the provincial police near Thunder Bay. Det.-Const. Lynn MacKay, who worked in London for years under her married name, Lynn Pretty, before joining the Nipigon OPP, was charged along with her boyfriend following an Oct. 5 raid on a house that netted $6,000 worth of marijuana. |
| Oct 15, 2007 |
Harper Gets Tough On Drugs, Soft On Logic Harper promises that someone caught selling even the smallest amount of drugs will face harsh penalties. Frankly, doesn't the government have better things to devote tens of millions of dollars to than chasing around people dealing a few grams of marijuana? Wait a minute: five years ago, wasn't there widespread support for legalizing marijuana? |
| Oct 16, 2007 |
ON:
Pro-pot Protest Planned Protesters calling for the decriminalization of one of Canada's most readily-available illegal drugs are planning a massive march through Cornwall this weekend. Organizers of the first annual "Walk 4 Weed," which is being promoted by local pro-pot group Cannabis Cornwall, are hoping at least 400 people will peacefully march through the city Saturday afternoon. |
| Oct 16, 2007 |
Curiosity About Drugs Shouldn't Be a Crime For many years, I have been able to successfully stick my head in the sand about illegal drug use. My older child started high school this fall. The sand is crumbling away. |
| Oct 16, 2007 |
Green Party More Than Just Tree-Huggers Green is for marijuana, a carbon tax, income splitting for couples and dying with dignity, according to federal party leader Elizabeth May. - - Along with a $50/tonne carbon tax to limit pollution, the Greens are touting legalized and taxed pot, universal child-care and a tax system that encourages more family time at home and with friends by splitting taxable income. |
| Oct 17, 2007 |
New Money, Same Old War It's probably helpful at this point to review a couple of simple, if inconvenient, truths. Prohibition doesn't work. It's been the law of the land since 1929 and it hasn't made a dent in either supply or demand. Law enforcement doesn't work. You can buy illegal drugs in every town in Canada. You can acquire illegal drugs in every prison in Canada. If law enforcement can't control drugs in prisons, it takes a particular kind of idiot to think they'll be successful controlling them on the streets of a democratic country. |
| Oct 18, 2007 |
ON:
Hawkesbury Shops Ditch Drug Paraphernalia Hawkesbury merchants plan to stop selling marijuana bongs, drug pipes and other accessories at the request of police, even though it's legal to do so. The decision comes after a town hall meeting last week when store owners agreed with Hawkesbury OPP that they were aiding drug use by selling the paraphernalia, especially to youth. [More harm reduction out the window - kids will use pop cans and other questionable materials instead] |
| Oct 19, 2007 |
ONTARIO JUDGE RULES CANNABIS PROHIBITION INVALID <strong>Today in an Oshawa Court, the trial judge in the 'Tom, Dick, and Harry' case dismissed the charges against them, for simple possession of marijuana. He said that in his view the marijuana prohibition had no valid force or effect. ...He said the cases against Tom, Dick, and Harry, are dismissed because the law is not there to charge them or convict them. The exact terms of his decision will be available later, after an exchange of faxes with the Court house. </strong> [Every person arrested for a cannabis offense should read this important information and make their lawyer aware of it - this is a federal law and should be applied the same across the country] |
| Oct 19, 2007 |
Choose Your Poison On the farming side, any policy that successfully reduces the production of marijuana to a significant degree will utterly crash the economy of most of the interior of British Columbia. Mining, fishing, forestry and food farming, the mainstays of the interior economy, home to two million, have all been in inexorable decline for decades. The only thing keeping most families afloat is production of marijuana or jobs in retail and other industries supported by the proceeds of sales of marijuana by the growers. |
| Oct 19, 2007 |
Minister Rejects Mandatory Drug-Test Law Federal Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon won't legislate mandatory drug testing to weed out pot-smoking crew members on B.C. Ferries' northern fleet. Cannon says Canada's ferry operators already have the power to perform regular drug testing on employees, and he has instructed B.C. Ferries to get its own ship in order. |
| Oct 21, 2007 |
Can Employers Test For Pot? Drug and alcohol testing programs can be implemented in workplaces in Canada -- and employees suspended or fired as a consequence of the results. But Karen Izzard of the Canadian Human Rights Commission said Friday that employers who choose to do so face human-rights complaints or lawsuits. |
| Oct 22, 2007 |
A Criminal Mind: Juries Can Nullify, Just Don't Tell The common law recognizes the jury's power not to convict when a law is unfair, or when it would unfairly impact upon the accused. This is known as jury nullification. The trilogy of Canadian cases from the Supreme Court of Canada that have dealt with this are R. v. Morgentaler ( 1988 ), R. v. Latimer ( 2001 ), and the recent case of R. v. Krieger ( 2006 ). |
| Oct 22, 2007 |
Emery Case Rolls Out in Prince of Pot Doc There aren't enough adjectives in the dictionary to describe Marc Emery. Abrasive, brash, compelling, driven . . . and that's just the beginning of the alphabet. It's not surprising, then, that a new documentary on Emery's impending extradition hearing -- and possible life imprisonment for selling pot seeds -- is chock-full of the kind of hyperbole that vaulted him into headlines here when he was a London bookseller and political gadfly. |
| Oct 22, 2007 |
Pro-Pot Protest Nets Just 60 People Police were out in full force for a contingent of mostly teenagers protesting to decriminalize marijuana during Saturday's pro-pot rally. About 60 people marched up Pitt Street to Domino's Pizza near Tollgate Road for the first-ever Walk 4 Weed demonstration. It was a far cry from the hundreds who were expected to attend, but that didn't stop organizers from forging ahead with the peaceful demonstration. [So does police intimidation work?] |