Top Stories (2008) -
(386 items)
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| Jan 29, 2008 |
Man Sues Police For Wrecking Grow-op The Saanich Police Department is being sued by a man who claims his marijuana grow operation was damaged during a police raid, even though he had a Health Canada certificate to legally grow the substance. ..."Ninety-five [plants]... is well above personal consumption and most of it would go bad before the person could smoke it," said Price. |
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| Jan 27, 2008 |
Border Guard Found Guilty of Accepting Sex Bribes A former U.S. border guard has been convicted of accepting sexual bribes from a drug-smuggling Vancouver prostitute and giving her a free pass at the border. |
| Jan 26, 2008 |
Jury Shown Video Of 'Pastoral' Grow-Ops The three-hour movie is a compilation of seven video camera discs seized inside a teepee from which three men fled during a dawn raid on the site at the Pasqua First Nation. The Aug. 21, 2005 search, which included the RCMP's emergency response team ( ERT ), turned up more than 6,000 suspected marijuana plants, most of which were growing in six homemade greenhouses estimated to be about 60 by seven metres in size. |
| Jan 26, 2008 |
ON:
Cops Post Grow-Ops New homeowners in Ottawa will know if their dream house is a former marijuana grow operation or crystal meth lab as of Feb. 1. On that date Ottawa police will start posting addresses of busted drug operations on their website, following the lead of other Ontario municipalities that provide similar information to residents. |
| Jan 25, 2008 |
The Pot Circus Comes to the Courthouse First the cops took their pot. Now they want to take their church. Weed worshippers Walter Tucker and Michael Baldasaro, reverends in the Church of the Universe, were served yesterday with an application by the attorney general to forfeit the Barton Street building the brothers call both home and church. The AG is going after the house worth about $98,000 as "offence-related property" since Tucker and Baldasaro were convicted of selling $70 worth of marijuana to an undercover police officer. |
| Jan 25, 2008 |
BC:
Grow Busts Multiply The second grow-op drug bust this year marks another in a series of crackdowns by police, increasing the number to a level never before seen even by drug officers. The second grow-op drug bust this year marks another in a series of crackdowns by police, increasing the number to a level never before seen even by drug officers. |
| Jan 24, 2008 |
BC:
Grow-Ops Contributing To The Rental Crunch Marijuana grow operations are a major concern for law-enforcement agencies, but perhaps they should also be troubling to renters. That's because the indoor farming of cannabis-a multibillion-dollar crop in British Columbia-may be contributing the rental crunch. According to police, growers often use rental homes and commercial buildings to avoid damage to their own property. The City of Vancouver shuts down an average of 300 grow-ops a year, said Carlene Robbins, manager of City Hall's property-use branch. |
| Jan 22, 2008 |
Plea Bargain Talks Expected To Delay Emery Extradition Extradition proceedings against Marc Emery, Vancouver's self-styled Prince of Pot, were postponed Monday. The B.C. Supreme Court put the hearing over until today. The proceedings were expected to be further adjourned until Feb. 6 while a plea bargain is negotiated. |
| Jan 22, 2008 |
Tips On Grow-Ops Draining Crime Stoppers Marijuana Is Slowly Bleeding Crime Stoppers Of Niagara. "We're not funded by the government, we are not an arm of the police," said Crime Stoppers of Niagara chairman Stu Black. "We get our money through donations." ...With some funding from the Niagara Regional Police Services Board, Crime Stoppers hosted a training conference in June that raised enough money to get the organization out of trouble. |
| Jan 19, 2008 |
Local Federal Crown Backs Out of Trials In Dispute Over Pay Grace said federal prosecutions were taking 40 per cent of his time but generating only 10 per cent of his income. With the increase, he'll spend 20 per cent of his time dealing with federal matters and the rest as a defence lawyer, he said. Grace said there seems to be more longer trials, due to an increase in the number of marijuana grow operations in the area. They often involve multiple accused and multiple lawyers. |
| Jan 18, 2008 |
Constitutional Pot Challenge In Sechelt Provincial Court BC: The local courtroom is taking centre stage in a constitutional showdown on laws governing the possession of marijuana, after a written submission from Vancouver lawyer Kirk Tousaw on Tuesday. Tousaw and Ryan Poelzer, an East Vancouver man charged with possession of marijuana on the Coast in late May, are pursuing a constitutional defence based on the non-viability of Health Canada's 2003 Marijuana Medical Access Regulation ( MMAR ). "The courts have found, as recently as Jan. 2008, the MMAR is not constitutionally adequate," said Tousaw. "It's clear that the government can only prohibit possession of marijuana if it has a constitutionally adequate medical program." |
| Jan 18, 2008 |
Condo huff: Don't Fear The Reefer Erin is a medical user of marijuana...She is also licensed to grow a little dope at home, with the permission of the government. I think that makes the condo corporation nervous. ...She is growing 18 marijuana plants - that's all she needs - in what used to be the closet of her bedroom. [What will they do when more and more people begin growing vegetables indoors at home to help offset rising food costs?] |
| Jan 17, 2008 |
Pot Decision A Good Step Good for Judge Barry Strayer. Most have probably not heard of the man, but he's the Ontario federal court judge whose recent ruling allows the sick among us to more easily obtain marijuana for medicinal purposes. No matter your stance on the issue of pot, the facts are it helps many deal with symptoms of diseases and live decidedly more normal lives temporarily free of chronic pain. About 2,000 Canadians carry prescriptions allowing them to legally purchase the intoxicating weed. |
| Jan 17, 2008 |
Extraditing The Prince Of Pot Many Canadians will be tuning in to witness the fate of self-proclaimed "Prince of Pot" and marijuana seed distributor Marc Emery. Since Harper took office, $64 million has been pledged in the anti-drug fight... A UN study released in 2007 estimated Canadian pot use is four times that of the global rate and the highest in the industrialized world,..Economics professors at the Fraser Institute estimate Canadians will spend $1.8 billion this year on marijuana, Latest News: Extradition Hearing Adjourned - A press conference will take place at the BC Supreme Court at 800 Smithe Street, downtown Vancouver, at 10:00am on Tuesday, January 22nd. <a href="http://www.cannabisculture.com/noextradition/">www.NoExtradition.net</a> |
| Jan 16, 2008 |
This Is Your Law On Drugs In presenting the government's anti-drug plan in October, Prime Minister Stephen Harper never called it a "War on Drugs." But he talked tough about "breaking Canada's drug habit," and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson punctuated that sentiment by proposing a bill aimed at invoking mandatory jail sentences for drug offenders. Immediately, critics sounded off on what they saw as a host of inherent flaws in the government's whole approach to illicit drugs. One common strain of criticism pointed out that this is a familiar strategy once embraced by American policy-makers. |
| Jan 16, 2008 |
Drug Policy Wimps What a bunch of hypocrites our politicians are. Pot is illegal in this country but Ottawa couldn't muster up the effort to close down our most infamous marijuana activist. It's essentially an admission that our pot laws are ridiculous but we don't have the guts to reform them, despite repeated pleas by various bodies over the years. By turning a blind eye to Emery's activities, Ottawa has implicitly acknowledged that marijuana use is not a big deal. It's no wonder that, as the Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs noted in 2002, the gap between the law and public compliance has widened. After all, if Ottawa can't be bothered prosecuting a big fish like Emery, why should ordinary Canadians respect the law? |
| Jan 16, 2008 |
Weeding Out Bad Policy Pretending that marijuana possesses magic evil qualities that make it more dangerous than a thousand other substances our laws permit doctors to prescribe, from Ritalin to morphine, hurts physicians and their patients. |
| Jan 16, 2008 |
Plenty O' Pot News Lawyers for the Vancouver Island Compassion Society ( VICS ) will be back in court in February to defend the organization's constitutional right to distribute medical cannabis, despite the death of the judge who was presiding over the now two-year-old trial. |
| Jan 16, 2008 |
BC:
Door Opened For Large-Scale Pot Growing Cowichan could become one of Canada's medical cannabis capitals following last week's federal-court ruling allowing growers to supply more than one patient. |
| Jan 15, 2008 |
B.C.'s Prince of Pot Got What Was Coming to Him Still, Mr. Emery is anything but a sympathetic figure. In truth, the pot activist is a smart-ass egomaniac addicted as much to the fame and attention his marijuana crusade has brought him as he is to the B.C. Bud he likes to smoke so much. We can condemn U.S. drug laws as unduly harsh all we want, but the fact is they are the laws. And when we are in that country, or doing business with people who live there, we must respect those laws. If you decide to thwart them, as Mr. Emery did, you do so at your peril. |