Top Stories (2006) -
(313 items)
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| Dec 7, 2006 |
Mouldy Myths Cops Warn of Rampant Mould at Pot Ops but Public Health Says There's No Fungus in Sight Should a b-movie blob threaten the city, Toronto cops will have lots of experience battling make-believe enemies. Fact is, menacing claims last week by our finest that the grow ops busted at 2600 Jane were rampant with mould may be plain untrue. |
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| Dec 7, 2006 |
Mouldy Myths Cops Warn of Rampant Mould at Pot Ops but Public Health Says There's No Fungus in Sight Should a b-movie blob threaten the city, Toronto cops will have lots of experience battling make-believe enemies. Fact is, menacing claims last week by our finest that the grow ops busted at 2600 Jane were rampant with mould may be plain untrue. |
| Dec 6, 2006 |
Roots Of Drug Use Not Tackled, Says Expert The legal system is failing to shield the public from the effects of drugs, so the RCMP is tackling the responsibility of prevention more than ever. ...Those studies show that each child needs at least four positive adult role models in their lives in order to diminish the chances of problem drug use later in life. She suggested it was part of a Mountie's mandate to try to be one of those positive role models.... "Right now the barn door is wide open and no one is there to shut it," Rintoul said. [It is quite terrifying to see the path we have been going down in the decades since the war on (some) substance users began. The dogs, the lockdowns, the lack of respect - How many baby boomers would have gone on to graduate under those conditions? Unfortunately, they try and make sure that was the last rebellious generation to exist - since then they have ramped up attempting to shape obedient puppets. You certainly can not blame today's kids for looking at alternative education options. ] |
| Dec 6, 2006 |
RCMP Put Spin On Grow Op Busts Drug squad head Sgt. Tim Shields of the Kelowna RCMP spent a considerable part of a media briefing yesterday trying to convince reporters of a stand the force has taken often in the past: The majority of marijuana grow operations are connected to organized crime and that the dope they grow is smuggled into the U.S. and comes back as cocaine. During Green Team raids on 23 large grow houses, Shields said police seized 10,500 plants, enough by their calculations to provide every teenaged kid in the Central Okanagan school district with a joint a day for 429 days. But what about the obvious disparity? If the pot is all going south for cocaine, how is it that the same dope can also supply our kids for over a year? [ Kudos to this newspaper for not accepting the police PR at face value... if all media did this, peraps the drug war would be over.] |
| Dec 6, 2006 |
Rogue Officer Must Quit The Ottawa police officer has been found in violation of the basic standards expected under the Police Services Act. He was found guilty of the breach after a hearing that detailed his theft and use of crack cocaine. The hearing also revealed that Const. Hall lied about the extent of his prior use of marijuana on his application to become a police officer. |
| Dec 6, 2006 |
Huge Pot Sweep RCMP have dedicated six officers full-time to investigating and busting marijuana grow-operations in the Central Okanagan since Oct. 30. Working with six other drug-section members, the Green Team raided 23 grow-ops and seized 10,500 pot plants, worth an estimated $8.4 million on the street. [Everyone must feel so much safer now] |
| Dec 5, 2006 |
Police Officer Who Stole Crack Loses His Job An Ottawa police officer who admitted to stealing crack cocaine from suspects and smoking it himself has been dismissed from the force. [ Imagine if they caught every cop who stole or "confiscated" pot from suspects and took it home to smoke? We would have a lot less police.] |
| Dec 5, 2006 |
Business Busted Chatham-Kent police has scored its largest ever seizure of drug paraphernalia. During a raid at a St. Clair Street convenience store last week, officers seized more than 2,000 items including pipes, water bongs, scales and grinders. [Everyone feel safer now? Has this world gone completely insane?] |
| Dec 5, 2006 |
Pot Lobby Takes Another Hit Life just got considerably more difficult for potheads, stoners and other pro-marijuana activists seeking the legalization of their favourite herb. The Australian National Council on Drugs just released a report that reviews the findings of several hundred studies looking at the evidence-based effects of marijuana. And the results are damning for legalization and decriminalization advocates who have long argued that marijuana is essentially harmless, especially relative to tobacco and alcohol. |
| Dec 4, 2006 |
Heat's On Grow Ops TORONTO -- As fire chief in Niagara Falls, Ontario's new Fire Marshal garnered a reputation for helping police tear down marijuana grow ops through his aggressive approach to fire prevention. [Grow op mania has infected officials across the country, causing them to pay an inordinate amount of time and money rooting out gardeners] |
| Nov 30, 2006 |
PUB LTE: Kudos For Vote To Scrap Pot Prohibition Members of Saskatchewan's NDP made political history at their convention becoming Canada's first governing party to support a resolution to eliminate the prohibition on marijuana. Although this is a great first step, there is a long way to go before state-sponsored discrimination against Saskatchewan cannabis users ends. |
| Nov 30, 2006 |
Delegates Back Off Touchy Proposals Liberal delegates shelved Wednesday a series of hot-button policy proposals that, if passed at a full plenary session of delegates here today, would have called on a future Liberal government to legalize and regulate the marijuana industry, lower the age of consent for anal sex from 18 to 16, and expand the Vancouver supervised injection site pilot project for drug addicts to all major Canadian cities. [Liberals, Conservatives... does it matter? No party will regulate pot until they have permission from their global handlers] |
| Nov 30, 2006 |
Low Tolerance For High Drivers The Federal Conservatives Want to Amend the Criminal Code to Better Target Stoned Motorists. Is It a Safety Measure, an Electoral Ploy, or a New Way to Bust Potheads?... It would amend the Criminal Code by increasing penalties for drivers found under the influence or who are found to be in possession of an illicit drug. ...The bill has several obstacles to overcome before it becomes law. One is its constitutionality. |
| Nov 29, 2006 |
Pot Bylaw May Be Redundant Orillia wants to create a bylaw to help recoup costs from dismantling marijuana grow-ops, but Niagara Falls has been doing it without one for years, The Packet & Times has learned. Legislation to do it already exists, said Jim Jessop, an inspector with the Niagara Falls Fire Department. "All the tools we need to deal with it, we have now," he said. [Laws, laws, laws and more laws for pot - it is like a national neurosis] |
| Nov 29, 2006 |
Students Need To Be Re-Educated On Dangers Of Pot "The government is realizing how much money is spent on weed, and they're upset that they aren't getting a part of that money through taxes. But they know they can't legalize it now, with everyone thinking it's a 'hardcore' drug so they are letting on it is a 'soft' drug, so that in a couple years they will be able to legalize it because everyone will think it's no big deal," Powell said. I think that we need to re-educate the youth in how dangerous weed really is and eliminate this theory before it spreads out of control. |
| Nov 29, 2006 |
On The Lookout For A Nice Pair Of Hemp Boxers In conversation with the clerk, I found out that through a National Research Council program, Naturally Advanced Technology ( www.naturallyadvanced.com and www.hemptown.com ) of Vancouver is growing test plots of hemp in Saskatchewan and Alberta, with a goal of becoming a "dirt to shirt" company. |
| Nov 28, 2006 |
Country Going To Pot Today, nearly half a century, legions of narc squads, and several hundred million anti-drug dollars later, pot is being sold by kids, to kids in schoolyards from Pangnirtung to P.E.I. I smell its sweet, sharp scent pretty much every time I walk past the park in the middle of town. So much for the War on Drugs. |
| Nov 28, 2006 |
Right-Wing Reefer Conservative Leader John Tory used marijuana as a high school and university student, once favoured lighter sentences for pot traffickers and even drove while "stoned."... "That was then and this is now," he said. "I'm 30 years older, hopefully a lot wiser. I think these are experiences that kids often have that help them to learn lessons and shape their attitudes when they get older." [Classic example of why pot didn't become legal when all those lawbreaking teenagers who tried it became the lawmakers decades later ] |
| Nov 27, 2006 |
Grow-Op Building Plagued By Mould Ontario Conservative leader John Tory and Councillor George Mammoliti knocked on doors and held an impromptu town hall meeting yesterday in the lobby of 2600 Jane St., where police on Thursday found millions of dollars' worth of marijuana being grown in 22 units of the building. |
| Nov 26, 2006 |
Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone Sure, the NDP have been hypocritical. And one certainly has to look no further than that back-page advertisement in the recent NDP annual convention program that promotes the decriminalization of marijuana so that, as federal NDP Leader Jack Layton puts it in the ad, "people can enjoy marijuana in the peace and quiet of their own home, or in a cafe, without the fear of being criminalized." ....For a governing party that has added a "healthy living services" minister to the cabinet, that is now running a campaign against binge drinking and that has now introduced legislation enabling it to sue tobacco companies, this ad was pure hypocrisy. |