Prohibition
No reason for pot prohibition
By ALAN SHANOFF, QMI Agency / Published London Free PressDrug cartels, criminals, police chiefs, alcohol manufacturers and retailers, prison employees and big pharma, can now sleep easier.
California's Proposition 19 was defeated this week 54% to 46%. Marijuana prohibition remains in force in California. Recreational possession and use of pot remains illegal in North America.
But don't let your guard down. Keep lobbying against lifting pot prohibition because sooner or later people are going to come to their senses and accept that prohibition has been an abject failure.
Tainted cocaine in Maritimes: officials
CBC NewsCocaine users in the Maritimes are being warned that they are likely ingesting a harmful medication used to deworm livestock, says the Canadian Harm Reduction Network.
Between 60 and 90 per cent of the cocaine in North America is being cut with the drug levamisole, network director Walter Cavalieri said. Levamisole, an anti-parasitic drug, was withdrawn for human use in Canada in 2003.
Cavalieri said cocaine on the East Coast comes from the same sources, so the percentage of contaminated cocaine would likely be the same.
It's only a matter of time until changes come to marijuana laws
Now that the smoke has cleared from the marijuana legalization vote in California, it's obvious the real issue in the drug war, as in Afghanistan, is an exit strategy.
For the first time since the cannabis prohibition was imposed nearly a century ago, a rational, evidence-based debate is occurring and change is coming.
The Proposition 19 fight in the media began as a Cheech-and-Chong joke. But by the time it ended, the question was no longer whether to legalize but how to legalize -- the proposition failed because many who are anti-prohibition thought it was a bad model.
Report tracks ‘clear failure’ of cannabis prohibition
By: Benedikt Fischer, SFU NewsThe International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) last month released a research report co-authored by SFU health scientist Benedikt Fischer demonstrating “the clear failure of U.S. marijuana prohibition” and supporting evidence-based models for cannabis legalization and regulation.
Entitled Tools for Debate: U.S. federal government data on cannabis prohibition, the report uses 20 years of data collected by surveillance systems funded by the U.S. government to highlight the failure of cannabis prohibition in America.
The report finds that while increased funding for cannabis prohibition has increased cannabis seizures and arrests, the U.S. government’s own surveillance data shows that it has not led to reduced cannabis potency, increased prices or meaningfully reduced availability.
New view in war on drugs
By Darrell Bellaart, The Daily NewsIt's refreshing to hear a police officer speaking publicly against Canada's drug laws.
The police officer is David Bratzer. A beat cop in downtown Victoria, every day he sees the effects of the so-called war on drugs: A skyrocketing crime problem propped up by an army of down-and-out addicts who smoke, snort and inject every spare dollar they can get.
When he's not working as a police officer, Bratzer speaks publicly for a group calling itself Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
It was formed in 2002 by five police officers who, in a career of crime-fighting were frustrated with what they considered a failed international policy to tell young people to just say no to drugs.
Officer calls for truce in drug war
By Darrell Bellaart, Daily NewsMillions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted supporting a losing war on drugs, an off-duty Victoria City Police officer told Vancouver Island University criminology students this week.
Joanne Simister, VIU criminology department chairwoman, invited David Bratzer to speak to second-year students about why making drugs illegal only feeds organized crime, creating a costly vicious cycle with a heavy social price.
Bratzer told students preparing for jobs as crime-fighters that he supported the war on drugs "100%" before becoming a Victoria beat cop.
He changed his tune after carefully studying the evidence gathered by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Man fined for growing marijuana
MARY-ELLEN SAUNDERS TELEGRAPH-JOURNALST. STEPHEN - A Deer Island man was fined $800 for growing nine marijuana plants on his property.
Mark Raymond Rogers, 59, pleaded guilty to production of marijuana and appeared in St. Stephen provincial court Tuesday for sentencing.
Crown prosecutor Peter Thorn said the RCMP received a call from an animal protection officer who had been to Rogers' home on business and saw marijuana plants.
On June 5, the RCMP conducted a search warrant and found nine small plants growing in an enclosed area.
Home invaders steal legal pot
By Matthew Claxton, Langley AdvanceTwo Langley residents were held at gunpoint while thieves stole their legal medical marijuana crop a week ago.
The home invasion-style robbery took place on Oct. 21st in Willoughby. The two residents of the home were coming home from a shopping trip when three masked men forced their way into the home, said Cpl. Holly Marks, spokesperson for the Langley RCMP.
The residents were seated on the couch while two of the men harvested the marijuana growing in the garage.
All three suspects wore ski masks or other full-face coverings, gloves, and all-black clothing.
Jail drug trade must be probed
By: Susan Clairmont, The SpectatorThe province is refusing to tell the public if it is doing anything about allegations that a guard sold drugs in the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre.
The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services will not say if it is launching an internal investigation into a corrections officer arrested at work last Thursday.
“It’s our HR policy that prevents us from releasing personal information about our employees,” says Stuart McGetrick, spokesperson for the ministry.
The secret shame of Maclean’s
By Colby Cosh, Maclean'sA couple of weeks ago I ordered a copy of Emily Murphy’s The Black Candle (1922), the notorious, influential book that first defined drugs as a social problem in Canada, introduced the public to their varieties and effects, and led directly to the addition of marijuana to the Restricted List in 1923. I placed the order after reading the Sept. 3 Seattle Times op-ed by John McKay, the former U.S. attorney who (in connivance with our federal ministry) had Marc Emery extradited and jailed. McKay, forced out of his job because of political controversies and tergiversations you’d need a scorecard to comprehend, is now a professor of law. His editorial was a tub of ordure hurled backwards at his own career: in it, he characterized U.S. marijuana law as a parade of blind idiocies that enriches criminals and gets cops killed unnecessarily.
Having left law enforcement, McKay had the chutzpah to add that prohibition survives partly because “no one in law enforcement is talking about it.” Apparently they like to wait until they have tenure. I’d say his belated gesture of courage deserves something like the reward given to the naval gunner in Victor Hugo’s Quatrevingt-treize who leaves a cannon unsecured below decks and heroically brings it under control. In the book, the commander pins the Cross of St. Louis on the man’s breast—and immediately orders him shot.
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