Jacob Hunter's blog

Changing goal from removing the harm of drugs to making country 'drug free' is not working

By Evan Wood, Special to the Sun
The Vancouver Sun

Before Stephen Harper's Conservatives took power, an exhaustive national consultative process led by Health Canada and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse informed the development of Canada's National Drug Strategy.

The painstaking and inclusive process, which involved all federal political parties and virtually all stakeholder groups, aimed to remove the rhetoric and emotion that have traditionally guided Canada's response to illicit drugs and, instead, sought to incorporate the best available scientific evidence into the fight against the drug scourge.

The central aim of the strategy was "to ensure that Canadians can live in a society increasingly free of the harms associated with problematic substance use," and differed from the U.S. approach in that it put emphasis on reducing harm, rather than the less pragmatic goal of making society "drug free."

However, when the Tories assumed power in 2006, the results of this exhaustive effort were thrown out before the strategy could be implemented and a new Tory "Anti-Drug Strategy" was soon released. Although the pre-existing drug strategy had been criticized by a 2001 auditor-general's report, which demonstrated that 93 per cent of federal funding already went towards law enforcement, the Tories' new anti-drug strategy redoubled the focus of Canada's drug control efforts on law enforcement.

This re-aligned Canada's anti-drug efforts with the U.S.'s longstanding "war on drugs," and documents obtained through freedom of information requests have demonstrated the close collaboration between Conservative cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats from the Bush White House in helping craft the Tories' anti-drug plans. Read more »

Fixing the Drug War: Nine steps to end gang violence in Canada

Photo and story by The Blackbird

British Columbia’s Lower Mainland region has incurred a marked escalation in drug-related gang violence over the past two years. The public has expressed outrage over the authorities’ impotent response to the rise in daylight shootings on our streets and in shopping malls, restaurants and parkades. With little to indicate that current drug enforcement policy will curtail the black market trade in drugs and much to suggest it works to support it, a new plan of action is required. The following are nine steps the government can take to end gang violence in Canada:

01 End Canada's involvement in the Afghan War
Canada has never been the target of a foreign terrorist attack, yet we are engaged in an American-led War on Terror in a country that saw a rise in opium export from 450 tonnes in 2000 to 8,200 tonnes in 2007 and now produces 93 per cent of the world opium supply. Read more »

(CNN) -- While Congress is considering major spending requests for security along the Mexican border to help curb drug violence, others are proposing a less-expensive but, some say, dangerous solution: decriminalizing drugs.
Federal police investigate a crime scene in Juarez. There have been about 1,000 drug-related deaths in Mexico so far this year.

Federal police investigate a crime scene in Juarez. There have been about 1,000 drug-related deaths in Mexico so far this year.

"It's the least worst option to ending the cartel violence," El Paso, Texas, city Councilman Robert O'Rourke told CNN in a phone conversation last week. "I thought our drug laws were silly, but you don't realize how big of a problem you're facing until it really gets brought home for you in your community."

O'Rourke knows what it's like to live in a border town gripped by drug violence. El Paso and its Mexican sister city Juarez share a street grid system, among other things. Read more »

Medical Marijuana Accolades: Semper Fi David and Fellow Grunts
Dr. Phillip Leveque Salem-News.com

Pain pills prescribed by the VA don’t always work for PTSD and cause addiction.

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - The people who know the most and best about the benefits of marijuana as medicine are certainly not the physicians nor the pharmacologists such as myself. Frequently I get letters like this one I am responding to.

David is a Marine Combat Veteran/Victim of two extensive combat tours in Iraq. He definitely has PTSD with depression, pain and social and family problems. This is a sterling example of been there, seen that, done that.

He has been given pain pills by the VA which don’t work for PTSD and just cause addiction. Anti-depressants don’t work either, they just make most people dopey! Read more »

by Bruce Mirken

For years federal officials have been trying to scare Americans, especially parents, into believing that marijuana is dangerously addictive. Former drug czar John Walters loved to deploy frightening statistics, as when he told the Cincinnati Post in 2005, “Nationwide, the number of teens seeking treatment for marijuana abuse or dependency was higher than for all illegal drugs combined.”

But the latest federal report on drug treatment admissions, released this week, shows that the majority of those in treatment for alleged marijuana abuse or dependence didn’t seek treatment at all: They were forced into it. Read more »

By TOM FAHEY
State House Bureau Chief
Thursday, Mar. 19, 2009

CONCORD – A bill allowing severely ill patients to grow and use marijuana for medicinal purposes has won a 13-7 vote in the House Health and Human Services Committee.

The bill, HB 648, heads to the full House for a vote next week. Two Republicans joined the Democratic majority in support of the bill.

The bill requires patients to be certified by a doctor before they can grow or possess up to six plants or two ounces of marijuana. They or a caregiver can grow the plants, and a patient is given the option of obtaining marijuana from another certified patient. Read more »

Did you know you're safer than you were at the beginning of last year? No? Well, tell it to the feds.

The feds, after all, are telling it to you. In fact, they took the trouble to issue a press release one year ago -- or shortly before gang violence began to escalate -- asserting that "Canadian communities [are] now safer as Tackling Violent Crime Act receives royal assent."

The act included a number of controversial measures, but the one that received by far the most attention, from the government itself, involved increasing mandatory sentences for certain gun crimes. This measure was necessary because, in the words of then public safety minister Stockwell Day, gangsters "have no fear of the consequences of committing" gun crimes because of the failings of the law. Read more »

03/19/2009 @ 9:21 am
Filed by John Byrne

A California Democrat has introduced a bill in Congress that would end the practice of judges being forced to impose mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders.

The Major Drug Trafficking Prosecution Act of 2009 (bill text) aims to repeal federal guidelines that force judges' hands in drug cases, and give power back to judges to determine sentences based on other elements of the case, not simply the weight of the drugs involved.

"This legislation will refocus federal prosecutorial resources on major drug traffickers and eliminate racial disparities created by the mandatory minimum sentences for power and crack cocaine," said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who authored the bill (her floor statement is available here). Read more »

March 19, 2009
By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday outlined a shift in the enforcement of federal drug laws, saying the administration would effectively end the Bush administration’s frequent raids on distributors of medical marijuana.

Speaking with reporters, Mr. Holder provided few specifics but said the Justice Department’s enforcement policy would now be restricted to traffickers who falsely masqueraded as medical dispensaries and “use medical marijuana laws as a shield.”

In the Bush administration, federal agents raided medical marijuana distributors that violated federal statutes even if the dispensaries appeared to be complying with state laws. The raids produced a flood of complaints, particularly in California, which in 1996 became the first state to legalize marijuana sales to people with doctors’ prescriptions. Read more »

By Andy Birkey 3/19/09 10:41 AM

A bill offered by Sen. Juliane Ortman, R-Chanhassen, and Rep. Dave Olin, DFL-Thief River Falls, would recriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana and increase penalties for possession of large amounts of marijuana and possession of marijuana plants. Minnesota decriminalized “small amounts” of marijuana in 1976, making the punishment for possession on par with a traffic violation.

Under HF1596 and SF1683, a “small amount” would mean 14 grams instead of 42.5 grams. Fourteen grams is the amount contained in a typical $20 bag of marijuana. More than 14 grams but less than 42.5 grams would constitute a misdemeanor crime under the new bill.

The bill lowers the threshold for felony marijuana possession. Possession of between 42.5 grams and 1 kilogram would be a fifth-degree drug crime of less than five years in prison. Current law says that threshold is 10 kilograms. Read more »