Prohibition
Study casts doubts over Tory strategy on illicit drug use
By: Steve Rennie, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - It's not clear the Conservatives are getting a whole lot of bang for all the bucks thrown at the illicit drug problem, a new report says.
A consultant hired by the Justice Department couldn't tell whether the Tory drugs strategy is working.
That casts doubt over the value of a multimillion-dollar suite of anti-drug programs, which has formed part of the Tories' tough-on-crime message.
The true cost of various legislation to crack down on crime is at the heart of hearings this week into whether the Harper government is in contempt of Parliament.
The government had refused a request from the Commons finance committee for detailed cost estimates for all crime bills on the grounds they are cabinet confidences. The opposition disagreed. Read more »
The war on drugs is lost
By: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, The StarSAO PAULO—The war on drugs is a lost war, and 2011 is the time to move away from a punitive approach in order to pursue a new set of policies based on public health, human rights and common sense. These are the core findings of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy that I convened, together with former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia.
Finances, illness led them to grow pot, Chilliwack growers say
BY TYLER OLSEN, Vancouver SunCHILLIWACK -- Four men and two women sat clumped together around a French translator Wednesday, silent but listening.
If you saw any of the six in the presence of children, you would naturally assume they were grandparents.The youngest was 50, the oldest 71. During breaks in the proceedings they would chat and laugh in French, like middle-aged relatives at a family reunion.
They weren't at a reunion though. They were sitting in court, listening to their lawyers explain why police had found them at a large Nixon Road marijuana grow op in September of 2009, and why they didn't deserve to be sent to jail.
Illegal marijuana leads people to use cocaine instead
BY TONY SMITH, VANCOUVER SUNToday many people believe that marijuana should be legalized, and among those who disagree, the majority believe it is the least harmful of the illegal drugs.
Marijuana is the most easily detected drug by far, it gives itself away by its smell, which is universally recognized. It is that factor that causes the more susceptible to use cocaine rather than marijuana.
Consider a bar or coffee shop, where pot smokers join the other smokers outside, in the toilets, or in other designated smoking areas they are strongly discouraged and probably asked to leave.
Prohibition of marijuana is responsible for much of the gang violence both here and elsewhere
All of Vancouver has been shocked by the city's increasing gang violence. Sadly, the gunplay on Dec. 12, where 10 people were shot exiting a restaurant on Oak Street, is an occurrence that has become increasingly common in Canadian cities, and gang violence has long been a fact of life in most large U.S. cities. While reasons for gang affiliation are complex, there is no arguing that urban gangs -- and virtually all other well-funded organized crime groups for that matter -- derive their primary source of revenue from the trade in illegal drugs.
This violent reality has emerged as an unintended consequence of a more than a half-century long experiment aimed at reducing illegal drug supply through aggressive law enforcement. Remarkably, despite the U.S. taxpayer spending an estimated $2.5 trillion since America's "War on Drugs" was launched by former president Richard Nixon, drugs remain more available today than at any time in our history, while drug market violence has continued to worsen. A recent international example is the upsurge in drug-related violence in Mexico, which has claimed more than 30,000 lives after Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on the cartels in 2006. Read more »
Medical grow restrictions eyed by city
Chilliwack ProgressChilliwack city council might be looking at zoning restrictions to control where medical marijuana operations can be located in the future.
Council is set to vote on a motion Monday afternoon that would give city staff a mandate to explore development of such a bylaw, according to details in the Dec. 6 council agenda.
Pitt Meadows officials passed a "land use amendment" for controlling grow-op proliferation, which specifically prohibited medicinal grows from all zones except commercial and industrial.
The city's public safety committee raised the issue at the Oct. 13 meeting, before approving the recommendation that council will vote on later today.
IV drug policy fails HIV patients: Red Cross
CBC NewsThe spread of HIV and AIDS among millions of people could be slowed if addicts who inject drugs were treated as medical patients rather than as criminals, the International Federation of the Red Cross said Friday.
More than 80 per cent of the world's governments "are inclined to artificial realities, impervious to the evidence that treating people who inject drugs as criminals is a failed policy that contributes to the spread of HIV," the Red Cross said.
An estimated 16 million people worldwide inject drugs, mainly because it delivers the fastest, most intense high, in what has become a growing trend on every continent, according to the Red Cross.
Concern voiced over legal pot operations
By DANIEL PEARCE, Brantford ExpositorNorfolk's top cop has expressed concern over medical marijuana growing operations that have set up in the county in recent years, warning they could lead to violent crimes.
Even though the operations are licensed by government, and are completely legal, "there's a propensity for other activities" to go along with them, said Norfolk OPP Insp. Zvonko Horvat.
"It could escalate into violence. That's a bit of a concern for us," Horvat said this week following a police services board meeting.
In October, $8,000 in marijuana was stolen from a greenhouse in a break and enter in the west end of the county, Horvat announced at the meeting.
Cancer patient in legal limbo
By: Joan Walters, Hamilton SpectatorMartin Kaneva has been breaking the law each time he uses marijuana to ease the symptoms of his stomach cancer, even though he has a doctor’s prescription for the weed.
Kaneva, former executive chef at Carmen’s Banquet Centre, is entitled to what’s known as a medical marijuana licence from Health Canada, but has been caught in a bureaucratic runaround and massive wait list since a Toronto internist prescribed the drug in June.
An increasing number of Canadians are caught in Kaneva’s circumstance — although the exact number on the wait list is not known. MP Ujjal Dosanjh, federal Liberal health critic, says “the problem appears to be widespread.”
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