Top Stories (2007) -
(432 items)
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| Jul 20, 2007 |
Marijuana Laws Beyond Ridiculous The issue has nothing to do with whether marijuana is bad for you. The issue was and is do you deserve a criminal record or even jail time simply for lighting a joint? The answer is of course you don't . Criminal records are for criminals. Rapists, murderers, child molesters, even drunk drivers and petty vandals are criminals. Pot smokers are not...Marijuana laws aren't just wrong they're beyond ridiculous and nearly everybody knows it. Everybody except our government apparently. |
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| Jul 20, 2007 |
The Wrong Course On Marijuana It's disheartening to see Canada sliding backwards on drugs, embracing policies that have been proven to do considerable damage while accomplishing nothing. Policies like treating marijuana possession as a criminal offence. ...It is foolish to continue down such a destructive, costly path. |
| Jul 18, 2007 |
Marijuana Maverick Says It's About Rights Two weeks ago a civil suit, launched by Reimer, was thrown out of court with Ottawa Justice C. McKinnon saying that Reimer "was the author of his own misfortune."... "It's not publicity," says Reimer, who's been lighting up joints on a daily basis since he was 13. "What I want to do is to make sure people stand up for their right." With tears filling his eyes, he adds, "I love my county; it's getting less and less free all the time and it's very scary." |
| Jul 18, 2007 |
Pot Laws Do More Harm Than Good How many people you know have used marijuana in the past year? Would you consider them criminals? ...We hope that Senator Larry Campbell's call for decriminalization for small amounts of marijuana once again gains traction. He rightly points out that 600,000 Canadians who have been charged with marijuana possession offences have criminal records, [Actually there were 600,000 criminal records in the early 1990's. See <a href="http://www.mapinc.org/newstcl/v97/n000/a008.html">Source</a> It is estimated to be 1.5 million now. See <a href="http://www.johnhoward.ca/document/drugs/fact/1.htm" target="_blank">Source</a>] |
| Jul 18, 2007 |
We're Not Dopes Recent results about marijuana use raised more than a few eyebrows in this nation: Canada is tops in the industrialized world in terms of marijuana use... So, we are tops among Western countries in terms of pot use. It could be worse. We could be the biggest cocaine snorters on the planet. That dubious honour goes to Spain. Iran wins out for heroin, Australia for ecstasy and the Philippines for amphetamines. |
| Jul 17, 2007 |
Marijuana Possession Ruling May Cause Some 'Confusion' A recent ruling about Canada's pot laws might make it difficult to crack down on simple possession, legal experts say. But don't rush out and roll a joint in public just yet. Alan Young, Osgoode Hall law professor and marijuana legalization activist, said yesterday the grace period may not last long and doesn't stop cops from doing their job. |
| Jul 14, 2007 |
What's Really Fuelling This Economic Boom? While Canada ranked behind the U.S. and Mexico - which "may be the world's largest cannabis herb producers," according to the report - we're still known around the world for our B.C. bud. And with just 13.1 per cent of Canada's population, according to 2004 figures, our 40 per cent share of the nation's pot production adds up to a lot of grow ops per capita. |
| Jul 13, 2007 |
The Police Aren't Experts On Drug Use When the renowned social scientists of the Canadian Police Association testified to a Senate committee on illicit drugs, they claimed there is lots of evidence that liberal drug policies lead to greater drug use. "Legalization and permissiveness will increase drug use and abuse substantially," a spokesman told the senators. ..The experts I listen to are scientists. "Existing research seems to indicate that there is little apparent relationship between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and prevalence or frequency of use," concluded a 2001 report by a panel of the National Research Council, one of the U.S. National Academies of Science, probably the most esteemed scientific body in the world. |
| Jul 13, 2007 |
<h2>Judge rules Canada's pot possession laws unconstitutional</h2> A Toronto judge has ruled that Canada's pot possession laws are unconstitutional after a man argued the country's medicinal marijuana regulations are flawed. The man has no medical issues and doesn't want a medical exemption to smoke marijuana....In court, the man argued that the federal government only made it policy to provide marijuana to those who need it, but never made it an actual law. Because of that, he argued, all possession laws, whether medicinal or not, should be quashed....The judge agreed and dismissed the charges.Borenstein has given prosecutors two weeks before he makes his ruling official. |
| Jul 12, 2007 |
Walking Backwards Into A Wall If politics is supposed to lead the nation in debate, we're being taken for quite a ride when it comes to pot and the law. Discovering that, in 2006, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Halifax experienced up to 50-per-cent increases in cannabis-related arrests, is like walking backwards into a wall.... It's about time that we get over the stigma associated with many of the false assumptions that dominate this debate, and pragmatically move forward on eliminating pot prohibition. As someone who has both walked the streets as a member of the RCMP's drug squad and examined legislation for passage into law as a Senator, I have a sharp understanding of what constitutes a criminal. Those that use pot just don't fit the profile. |
| Jul 12, 2007 |
Morality Squad Should Lay Off Kieran King didn't even make it to his 16th birthday before being metaphorically shot down by the morality squad. King, a Grade 10 student at Saskatchewan's Wawota Parkland School, was handed a three-day suspension for protesting the school's reaction to his views on marijuana. |
| Jul 11, 2007 |
Legalizing Pot Makes Sense What's really remarkable about Canada's status as a cannabis capital is that if you were to set out looking for reasons to worry about it - -- reasons that do not amount to disliking it for its own sake -- you would have an awfully hard time finding them....That would seem to leave very little, aside from the omnipresent trade and travel considerations that come from being a neighbour of the U.S., to stand logically in the way of decriminalization. |
| Jul 11, 2007 |
What's Really Fuelling This Economic Boom? ...Linking unrelated trends can be dangerous, as any statistician will tell you, but we can't help but wonder how much of B.C.'s economic and real estate booms are really due to our standing as national pot kings. There's got to be some way all those people are affording all that high-priced real estate -- the average B.C. house price reached a record high of $454,945 in May, according to the Real Estate Weekly...But how strong would our economy be if grow ops -- and all the money they generate both directly and indirectly -- were taken out of the equation? ..During B.C.'s pot boom, real estate prices continue to climb unbelievably high. Coincidence? Maybe. [No coincidence, and politicians know it. Remember the raid on the BC legislature and the grow op raids tied to the same people..Coincidence? Maybe.] |
| Jul 11, 2007 |
CFL Gone To Pot, Ex-Player Says A Lot Of Players In The Cfl Smoke A Lot Of Marijuana. This is the word from Sean Millington, who spent 13 seasons as a running back with the B.C. Lions, Edmonton Eskimos, Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Toronto Argonauts and who has been a member of the CBC's CFL broadcast crew off and on since 2003. ...Millington claims that, unlike NFLers, CFLers generally don't get paid enough to be able to afford drugs -- except for marijuana. |
| Jul 10, 2007 |
We're Champion Potheads Marijuana use in Canada is the highest in the industrialized world, far higher than in the Netherlands where it's legal, and more than four times the global rate, a report by the United Nations has found....The data show Canadian usage fifth after Zambia ( 17.7 per cent in 2003 ), Ghana ( 21.5 per cent in 1998 ) and Papua New Guinea and Micronesia tied for first place at 29 per cent each in 1995. |
| Jul 9, 2007 |
An Apology Required WINNIPEG police officers were understandably dismayed that the man accused of shooting the officers in December has been released on bail, the judge having been convinced Daniell Anderson was neither a risk to the community or of fleeing. Their abusive comments, however, directed toward the judge are unacceptable and the officers must formally apologize to Court of Queen's Bench Justice Karen Simonsen. ...One officer was heard to say someone -- Daniell Anderson? -- should have been killed, while the mutterings of others called into disrepute the justice system. Said in the heat of the moment, they were nonetheless alarming remarks. |
| Jul 9, 2007 |
Pot Possession Arrests on the Rise The number of people arrested for smoking pot rose dramatically in several Canadian cities last year after the Conservatives took office and killed a bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana... Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Halifax all reported increases of between 20 and 50 per cent in 2006, while Montreal and Calgary saw their number of arrests dip a few points from the previous year. |
| Jul 8, 2007 |
Your Fate If Arrested For Pot Smoking? Marc-Boris St-Maurice has been arrested so many times for marijuana possession that he serves as a one-man clinical study in the fate reserved for those caught with small amounts of pot. The study's theme would be inconsistency. |
| Jul 7, 2007 |
BC:
Dope Bylaw Ignored Landowners are turning a blind eye to North Cowichan's bylaw mandating bi-monthly property inspections. In February, the municipality introduced the bylaw to crack down on marijuana growing operations.... Of the North Cowichan properties Allan manages through Rowan Property Management Ltd., half of the owners instructed Allan to ignore the bylaw. |
| Jul 7, 2007 |
ON:
Niagara Grow-Op Strategy Praised By Province At a press conference outside the Niagara Falls police station, Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor announced the Liberal government was expanding its "guns, gangs and grow-ops project" to combat violence and build safer communities. [The violence and economy created by prohibition becomes larger and more entrenched every year at the expense of civil society - but not enough members seem to notice or care - yet] |