May 7, 2011 is the Global Marijuana March, and of course there is always 4/20 (April 20) and Cannabis Day, July 1. We need organizers working across Canada on these and other events.
Send that link out over Facebook and Twitter, encourage your friends to sign up! WhyProhibition.ca will is the basis for a number of important campaigns, including a new BC referendum to legalize Marijuana. We need people to register so they can find out about upcoming protests, rallies, and laws.
We need bloggers, researchers, newshawks, and activists to get posting! You can use the userblogs section to post blogs, news, upload files (especially pamphlets, we're looking to host as many drug policy pamphlets as we can find!)
One of the most important things you can do is get involved in your local community. Join other activist groups, volunteer at soup kitchens, march in local parades. When we get involved, not only do we reach out to potential allies, but we also represent the best of our community to people who may be unfamiliar with it. If you're unsure about a group, attend some meetings and see if they're amenable to drug policy reform.
THE CITY is banking on the federal government sending more people to jail for longer periods of time if its hope of an economy-boosting jail here is to be realized.
A city co-sponsored feasibility study lists three pieces of legislation the federal government wants passed, each one of which would result in more people headed for federal jail cells.
One piece of legislation calls for minimum sentences for serious drug cases, another would end the practice of lopping off two days for every day a person is sentenced if that person has been in jail since first arrested and another would impose mandatory jail time for fraud.
The new sentence requirements could boost the federal jail population by 70 per cent, the study suggests.
Rob Nicholson today reintroduced C-15 as Bill S-10, the bill is slightly different, with mandatory minimum sentences kicking in at 6 plants, not 1. So, to say again, the bill no longer has a mandatory minimum sentence for 1 marijuana plant.
That being said, the bill is a disaster for Canada. S-10 will imprison thousands of Canadians for victimless crimes, send people to jail for growing 6 marijuana plants, making any hashish (or baked goods) and a host of other offences.
There is no evidence that S-10 will work, indeed, every scientific study says it will fail. We know that prohibition has never worked, and we know that mandatory minimum sentences only increase the violence in our society.
Please contact your Member of Parliament (Login to WhyProhibition.ca, your MP will display in the top Right of the page) and let them know you oppose S-10 or any mandatory minimum sentence for marijuana.
Additionally, please, call (866) 808-8407 to let the Conservative Party of Canada know you oppose their harmful and dangerous so called "tough on crime" strategy. The evidence is clear, S-10 will do nothing but harm our society and cost billions of dollars.
The criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in
overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed.
In response to the health and social harms of illegal drugs, a large international drug prohibition regime has been developed under the umbrella of the United Nations.1 Decades of research provide a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the global “War on Drugs” and, as thousands of individuals gather in Vienna at the XVIII International AIDS Conference, the international scientific community calls for an acknowledgement of the limits and harms of drug prohibition, and for drug policy reform to remove barriers to effective HIV prevention, treatment and care.
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Mon, 07/26/2010 - 10:11pm
Location
Thurlow and Nelson
Vancouver
This Sunday is Pride!
We want YOU to March with us! Meet at 11am, Nelson and Thurlow (Spot DE6).
We'll be there with a truck, sound system and lots flags and banners! We need lots of activists to march with us to demonstrate our support and solidarity with Pride Vancouver! Let's celebrate their victories while we struggle for our own!
Come out this Sunday at 11am, Nelson and Thurlow to march in Pride and help legalize marijuana! This will be a very fun event, so come down and prepare to have a lot of fun!
This is the 32nd year for Pride Vancouver, and more than 750,000 people are expected in attendance. This makes Pride one of the biggest events in Vancouver ever year, a crowd we can't afford to miss.
FRESNO, Calif. _ Local law enforcement officials joined their federal counterparts Wednesday to deliver a unified message: marijuana farming operations in the foothills and mountains of the Sierra Nevada are dangerous to citizens and the environment.
Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Benjamin Wagner, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, joined local sheriffs Margaret Mims of Fresno County, John Anderson of Madera County and Bill Wittman of Tulare County at a town hall in Clovis to discuss their concerns over marijuana-growing operations on public lands.
A card-carrying South Kitsap medical marijuana patient whose pot plants were stolen Sunday will probably get money, but not his plants, back from the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office.
The plants are now evidence in the criminal case against two Bremerton residents, ages 47 and 34, who are accused of stealing them.
The plants may be needed in court and will likely spoil before they can be returned to their original owner, Kitsap County Sheriff’s spokesman Scott Wilson said.
“We don’t want to provide something back that could cause illness,” Wilson said.
Equipment used in growing the pot, which was also stolen, will be returned to the patient once the case is over. The man will have to file a claim with the county to get compensated for the plants, Wilson said.
A US newspaper has hired a marijuana critic who is paid to get high and write about his experiences like a restaurant reviewer.
The Denver Westword will run a regular column by "William Breathes" as he goes around reviewing local medical marijuana dispensaries.
The writer, who goes by the pen-name so he is not recognised while 'working', will offer his insight into the quality of service and the quality of the marijuana served.
In Colorado, where medical was legalised 10 years ago, more than 100,000 have applied for medical marijuana licenses, including the critic who suffers from chronic stomach pains.
PORTLAND, Ore. - The Oregon Court of Appeals has ruled that the state cannot take away children from a mother who tests positive for marijuana without evidence that shows her drug use endangers the children.
The court's decision on Wednesday reversed a Marion County juvenile court ruling in the case of a 19-month-old and a 6-month-old the state attempted to take from a woman who tested positive for marijuana during an investigation of the father's own drug use.
The Oregonian reports that the case began in 2009 when the state began investigating claims the father of the children was selling methamphetamine at the family's home.
The wild card in November’s election is marijuana. It just depends on who decides to vote. The kind of voters drawn to the polls by Proposition 19, which legalizes marijuana and allows localities to tax and regulate it, may be a determining factor.
Asked at the state Democratic Party convention in April how Democrats can re-energize President Obama voters from 2008, Party Chair John Burton replied: “Pot.” Without arguing the merits of legalization, Burton said the ballot measure “will turn out people.”
The already high-profile proposition would allow cities and counties to adopt ordinances that license and regulate the “cultivation, processing, distribution, transportation and sale” of marijuana. Some estimates say taxing retail sales, which are limited to one ounce to persons 21 years of age or older, could raise as much as $1.4 billion annually.
It's safe to assume most people have never heard of the "Vienna Declaration." And that simple fact helps explain why public policies that fail -- policies that do vastly more harm than good -- can live on despite overwhelming evidence of their failure.
The Vienna Declaration, published in the medical journal The Lancet, is an official statement of the 18th International AIDS Conference, which wraps up today in Vienna. Drafted by an international team of public health experts, including Evan Wood of the University of British Columbia, the Vienna Declaration seeks to "improve community health and safety" by, in the words of the committee, "calling for the incorporation of scientific evidence into illicit drug policies."
Please don't stop reading. I promise this will not turn into another of my rants about the catastrophic failure of drug prohibition. I've been writing variations on that theme for more than a decade now and everyone knows I am a crazed extremist whose views are not to be trusted by decent folk. I'll spare you.
Instead, I will merely present a few sentences from the Vienna Declaration:
Medical marijuana is now legal in the District after the Democrat-controlled Congress declined to overrule a D.C Council bill that allows the city to set up as many as eight dispensaries where chronically ill patients can purchase the drug.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) said in a statement the bill become law after Congress finished its business Monday night because neither the House nor Senate opted to intervene.
The council approved the bill in May, and under Home Rule Congress had 30 legislative days to review it.
Opinion by Marijuana Policy Project , Published: Opposing Views
WASHINGTON — Two ideologically diverse advocates today echoed an earlier call by a coalition of drug-policy reform groups by condemning a series of recent raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration on medical marijuana collectives that were operating legally under state law. The Tenth Amendment Center, a group that advocates on behalf of states’ rights, and Jane Hamsher, the publisher of Firedoglake.com, called on the DEA to respect duly adopted state medical marijuana laws and immediately end these raids.
Ask former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara when he began to support the notion of legalizing marijuana, and you don't get a short answer. It began half a century ago, when he was a rookie cop busting dope fiends in Harlem on a daily basis. It continued as he rose up the ranks, and was sent by the New York Police Department to earn advanced degrees in Harvard -- where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on "the history of criminalizing drugs and its impact on the police." And he served for 18 years as police chief at two major American cities, and knows better than most what it takes to prosecute a war on drugs.
Perhaps the shortest answer is that McNamara has felt this way for most of his lifetime. He wasn't in a position to say so before -- but he sure is now.
McNamara penned an editorial emphatically supporting legalizing pot -- and voting yes on Proposition 19 --appearing in yesterday's Chronicle. Today he told SF Weekly that the drug policies he was mandated to carry out as a police officer, commander, and chief for more than 35 years were not only unproductive -- they were counterproductive. "We're doing far more damage with the war against marijuana than any good that could possibly be coming out of it."
The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.
Saying the US criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some circles. But the facts are overwhelming. No real debate about that. Below I set out numerous examples of these facts.
The question is – are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as intended? Is the US criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control millions of African Americans?
Welcome to WhyProhibition.ca. We are working to repeal the prohibition of cannabis by organizing and educating the public. Sign up to get alerts, and access to organizing tools.
By. Kat Lee
Rob Nicholson today reintroduced C-15 as Bill S-10, the bill is slightly different, with mandatory minimum sentences kicking in at 6 plants, not 1. So, to say again, the bill no longer has a mandatory minimum sentence for 1 marijuana plant.
By. The Fresno Bee
By Josh Farley
By. Newslite.tv
By. The Associated Press
by Greg Lucas, Caivn.org
By Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
By Tim Craig, D.C. Wire
Opinion by Marijuana Policy Project , Published: Opposing Views
By Joe Eskenazi, San Francisco Weekly
By Bill Quigley, AlterNet
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