Top Stories (2007) -
(432 items)
(All links open in new tab)
| Mar 8, 2007 |
OPP Busts Huge Marijuana Factory Ontario Provincial Police said they seized 3,100 marijuana plants in varying stages of growth, along with nearly $700,000 in lighting, and electrical and building equipment, after executing a search warrant on the former Nordik Imperial Mushroom Farm, at 1454 Highway 138, on Tuesday. |
|---|---|
| Mar 7, 2007 |
BC Must Protect Grow Op Kids - Social Workers Last December, Alberta passed the Drug-Endangered Children Act, which establishes that having kids in a grow op or meth lab environment can be considered abuse. An association representing social workers in this province said similar guidelines are needed here. [It is a very dangerous precedent to term something "child abuse" when it could be nothing of the sort] |
| Mar 6, 2007 |
More Young People Smoke Pot Than Tobacco, Survey Finds Average Age Of First Marijuana Use Is 14.7 Years, Compared To 13.9 Years For Tobacco And 14.1 Years For Alcohol A Vancouver Coastal Health survey has found that most youth in Vancouver start smoking marijuana before their 15th birthday, not long after their first whiff of tobacco or sip of beer.... The city-wide survey of youth aged 16 to 24 shows cannabis sativa is the illicit drug of first choice for today's young people.... Almost seven out of every 10 of those surveyed ( 68 per cent ) said they had tried marijuana at least once.... That climbs to a whopping 80 per cent for those aged 19 to 24, suggesting that just 20 per cent of the city's younger residents have never experimented with the illegal plant.... Overall, 54 per cent of all those surveyed told researchers they had used marijuana during the past year. |
| Mar 5, 2007 |
Put Pot Growers Behind Bars, Court Of Appeal Tells Judge The B.C. Court of Appeal has told lower court judges that pot growers should be jailed to buttress the anti-marijuana law. In a significant unanimous ruling that tries to address vexing questions raised by judges dealing with pot offenders, a three-judge panel unanimously ordered a 12-month jail term for a Courtenay man with no criminal record who was caught growing dope for profit. |
| Mar 3, 2007 |
Recreational Drugs Should Be Legalized Author: Laurie Cook, MD Society does not criminalize alcohol consumption. Previous attempts to do so resulted in widespread disregard for the law and generated criminal empires. And these attempts did not work. Smokers are not criminals and the government aggressively promotes gambling. Both activities are widely accepted to be harmful and addicting. What about gasoline, hairspray and glue? All are used to "get high." |
| Mar 2, 2007 |
Cannabis Studies by Condition Just in the last five years alone, we counted more than 12 studies that reported in the media the possible effectiveness of marijuana in treating such debilitating conditions as: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n269/a02.html?322560 [Not Canadian content, but good outline of recent medical studies] |
| Mar 2, 2007 |
Hemp, Flax Could Be Used To Build Your Next Vehicle Auto manufacturers could be just three years away from replacing some of the plastics used in cars with compounds made from hemp, canola oil and flax fibres, says one of Canada's top auto engineers. And the changes could significantly reduce dependence on oil, Peter Frise said Thursday. |
| Mar 2, 2007 |
New Bid To Start Hemp Plant In Dauphin Manitoba - FOR the second time in almost 10 years, efforts are underway to develop a multimillion-dollar hemp processing plant in Dauphin. Parkland BioFibres Ltd. is looking to build a $14-million raw industrial hemp processing operation to make building insulation. The 50 members of the Parklands Industrial Hemp Growers Co-Op have committed $2 million to the project and promoters are seeking another $3.3 million from private investors. |
| Feb 22, 2007 |
Canada Must Not Follow The U.S. On Drug Policy The U.S. drug czar, John Walters, is in Ottawa today, trying his best to put a positive spin on one of the greatest disasters in U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Part of his agenda is to persuade Canada to follow in U.S. footsteps, which can only happen if Canadians ignore science, compassion, health and human rights. The United States ranks first in the world in per-capita incarceration, with roughly five per cent of the earth's population but 25 per cent of the total incarcerated population. Russia and China simply can't keep up. Among the 2.2 million people behind bars today in the United States, roughly half a million are locked up for drug-law violations, and hundreds of thousands more for other "drug-related" offences. The U.S. "war on drugs" costs at least $40 billion U.S. a year in direct costs, and tens of billions more in indirect costs. It's all useful information for Canadians to keep in mind when being encouraged to further toughen their drug laws to bring them in line with those of the United States. |
| Feb 21, 2007 |
Officers Abused Lawyer's Son: Lawsuit Claims Edmonton police officers detained and strip-searched the son of Edmonton defence lawyer Tom Engel after they threw away the evidence -- a marijuana cigarette -- of his alleged crime, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday. |
| Feb 21, 2007 |
Hemp Shop Owner Delays Plan To Open Medicinal Room A Saskatchewan hemp shop owner says he will delay opening a smoking room for medical marijuana users until he knows if it's legal. Dean Foster, who owns Field of Dreams in Regina, had planned to open what he calls a marijuana "inhalation room" last week and even sent out flyers advertising memberships. |
| Feb 21, 2007 |
PUB LTE: It Won't Work hate to rain on your parade, but more citizens reporting each other to the police for growing cannabis will not improve the situation. ( You can help, Feb. 14 ). The police do not lack intelligence -- so to speak. The number of growing operations reported to police in B.C. is increasing by about 48 per cent per year, outpacing efforts to investigate and close them down. According to the RCMP, the national annual seizure average is about 1,300,000 plants. This translates into an annual production estimate ranging between 1,070 and 2,676 metric tonnes of herbal cannabis. Only 51 tonnes were seized in 2005, or less than two per cent of the harvest. As with wolves and their prey, police predation merely culls out the weak. |
| Feb 21, 2007 |
PUB LTE: Make It Legal Merritt's hazardous marijuana grow operations are a direct result of marijuana prohibition. Legitimate farmers do not steal electricity to grow produce in the basements of rented homes. If legal, growing marijuana would be less profitable then farming tomatoes. As it stands, the drug war distorts market forces such that an easily grown weed is literally worth its weight in gold. Rather than continue to subsidize organized crime, Canadian policymakers should ignore the reefer madness hysteria of the U.S. government and instead to to look their own Senate for guidance. In the words of Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, "Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue." |
| Feb 20, 2007 |
RCMP Zero In On Pot Growing Mission RCMP officers are gunning for marijuana grow operation owners within the district....Lemaitre said the marijuana police find is seldom for personal use. "This pot is meant for export and sale and that comes back to Canada in the way of cocaine and firearms," Lemaitre said, pointing to the recent arrest of a suspected gun smuggler at the Aldergrove border crossing. [Why do the police have so much time to deal with prohibition related crime, rather than crime that impacts citizens like robbery, assault, rape?] |
| Feb 20, 2007 |
PUB LTE: Refreshing Read Thank you to John Gleeson for writing such a sensible and honest article ( Drug profits and the big picture, Point of View, Feb. 18 ). It was so refreshing to read a drug-prohibition news piece backed up with science, facts and logic instead of quotes from police about their "beliefs" and ( questionable ) statistics. When discussing public health and safety issues, it's absolutely essential to be unbiased, unemotional and factual -- especially by referring to reputable and independent studies, such as the Fraser Institute report, which Gleeson mentioned. This is the kind of newspaper article we should see more often. Kudos to the Winnipeg Sun for running this important information. |
| Feb 17, 2007 |
Bill Would Force Landlords To Evict Suspected Criminals A Calgary MLA plans to introduce a private member's bill that, without using the Criminal Code, would force landlords to evict tenants from homes where drug use or prostitution is alleged. [Why worry about things like due process and rights] |
| Feb 17, 2007 |
Home Owner Disputes Inspection Bill The City of Pitt Meadows has now inspected seven homes in the past two weeks for abnormally high hydro consumption. The inspections are part of a three-month pilot project to eliminate residential marijuana grow operations through safety inspections. No marijuana operations were found at any of the seven homes in Pitt Meadows. |
| Feb 17, 2007 |
Appeal Court Takes Away Pot Trafficker's House He lost his weed and his freedom, and now a Grand Lake property owner has lost his home. The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ruled Friday that a judge erred when he decided not to forfeit Rady Siek's home to the Crown in a marijuana cultivation case. |
| Feb 16, 2007 |
The Quiet Americans Quietly and deliberately, over the past decade, the U.S. consulate on West Pender Street has built its own police service. Dubbed the Law Enforcement Working Group, or LEWG, it now has 12 agents. More are expected as Vancouver and Whistler prepare to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. Vancouver and Toronto are the only cities in Canada with U.S. law enforcement hubs, although one is in the works for Montreal. Senior U.S. agents in Ottawa oversee the work of the hubs. But the total number of U.S. agents in Canada remains classified. |
| Feb 13, 2007 |
Man Shot By Masked Trio During Violent Grow Rip A 38-year-old Richmond man is still in hospital recovering from a gunshot wound sustained in a marijuana grow rip operation Saturday night....A neighbour said RCMP showed up in the area looking not only for the three suspects, but the victim as well. [ If there was no prohibition, there would be no stories like this, therefore it is prohibition related, not drug related] |