war on drugs
The United Nations on Drugs: Alice in Wonderland Revisited
By Neil Boyd, Vancouver SunThe most recent edition of The Guardian Weekly, a typically “progressive" news outlet, devoted a full page to the wildly speculative musings of Antonio Maria Costa, the outgoing director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Mr. Costa made three key claims, none of which have any compelling empirical support. First, he argued that making illegal drugs more freely available will lead to more “public health damage”.
Tune in: psychedelic drugs are back
By: Antonia Zerbisias, The StarNo, you are not having an acid flashback.
For the first time since the 1960s, psychedelic drugs are again the subject of legitimate research.
Doctors at top hospitals and universities in Canada, the U.S. and abroad are experimenting with LSD, MDMA (“ecstasy”) and psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in “magic mushrooms,” as treatments for, variously, tobacco addiction, cluster headaches, obsessive-compulsive disorder and suicidal thoughts — as well as anxiety and depression in people with end-stage cancer.
Other research is being conducted with the prescription sedative ketamine, known on the street as “Special K.”
Hypocrisy weeds out Prince of Pot
By Sandra Thomas, Vancouver CourierCosmetic pesticide use was banned in Vancouver Jan. 1, 2007.
But the sale of pesticides wasn't banned. So as long as you promise the sales-clerk at your local garden shop or big box store that you're intending to use that bottle or box of chemicals anywhere but in the soon-to-be greenest city in the world, you can make your purchase and leave.
That sales-clerk has no way of knowing if you plan to use those pesticides in Vancouver or in a municipality where the toxic chemicals are also banned. It makes me wonder if there would be any repercussions should the purchaser of those chemicals be busted using them illegally and the package was traced back to a Vancouver store.
RCMP drug bust nets tomatoes and dahlias
A Courtenay man is furious after police came to his house looking for marijuana, only to discover garden tomatoes and dahlias.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the man told the Echo that the incident has left him "sick to his stomach" and calling for more civilian oversight of the RCMP.
On Aug. 29 at about 10:30 p.m., the man was sleeping upstairs in his room. His wife, who was preparing to head to bed, saw several police cars pull up in front of the house.
The man said he awoke to his wife's shouting. He came downstairs to see his wife standing on the porch in handcuffs and a police officer told him he was under arrest for growing a controlled substance.
Marijuana gateway risk overblown: study
CBC NewsLong-held fears that the use of marijuana will lead to harder drugs are overblown, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire.
The research, in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, found that other factors, such as whether or not a person has a job, or is facing severe stress, are far more predictive of future hard drug use than whether they smoked pot as a teenager.
"Employment in young adulthood can protect people by closing the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities," said co-author Karen Van Gundy.
Liberals blast prison spending on cells
The federal Tories have politicized a prison space crisis in a bid to make emergency spending look like economic development, charges a Liberal MP.
Conservative MPs and ministers have begun criss-crossing the country, making campaign-style announcements at each one of 35 federal penitentiaries where new cells will be built to accommodate an exploding inmate population.
"The Conservatives don't miss an opportunity to try to turn anything into pork barrelling, and so what they're doing of course is to masquerade this outrageous and outlandish prison spending as somehow being a stimulus to the economy," Ajax-Pickering MP Mark Holland told the Whig-Standard Wednesday.
Failed drug war tactics won't curb human smugglers
The StarPhoenixWhile Canadians justifiably have been preoccupied with a system that allowed 490 Sri Lankan Tamils to end up on West Coast after each paying human smugglers tens of thousands of dollars, the truly dark side of this odious industry came to light in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
The bullet-riddled bodies of 72 migrants from Central and South America were found there last week, victims of human traffickers who disposed of their suddenly inconvenient human contraband as they might flush a bag of dope rather than get caught.
Our drug priorities need to change
By MINDELLE JACOBS, Toronto SunThe federal government has it half right. We have a drug problem. But it’s not marijuana, which has never killed anyone. It’s the abuse of prescription drugs which kills hundreds of Canadians annually.
Whether it’s because of ongoing pain, depression or the urge to get high, more and more people are heading to their doctors — not the neighbourhood pusher — for a fix.
As the International Narcotics Control Board noted in its 2009 annual report, the abuse of prescription drugs in North America is second only to the abuse of cannabis.
The rising trend against the war on drugs
Editorial: Globe and MailToronto this week became the first city in the world to formally endorse the Vienna Declaration that states that war-on-drugs-style prohibitions are a costly failure, denounces the “severe negative consequences” of such policies both in terms of public health and crime rates, and urges a shift in emphasis to regulation and harm reduction.
It would be easy to dismiss the city council’s decision as a meaningless gesture by local politicians working well out of their depth, except that the push to decriminalize, not only marijuana, but hard drugs like cocaine and heroin as well, is a rising international phenomenon, being driven by serious and credible sources, not by local politicians or stoner websites.
Council votes to endorse decriminalization of drug use
By: Zoe McKnight, National PostToronto City Council voted to endorse the Vienna Declaration on Thursday, raising a loud voice against the war on drugs.
“The war against drugs has failed,” said city councillor Kyle Rae, who brought the declaration to council after attending the AIDS 2010 international conference this July, where it was announced. “In every jurisdiction and in every community, we know that policing this issue is not enough.”
The principles of the declaration favour a public health approach to dealing with drug addicts, rather than enforcing ever-stricter drug laws, which advocates say doesn’t work, and in fact can cause greater harm.
“Just as clearly as we know HIV is the cause of AIDS, we know the war on drugs doesn’t achieve its stated objectives and contributes to a range of harms, including the spread of HIV,” said Dr. Evan Wood, a research physician who studies infectious disease at the University of British Columbia, and who chaired the writing committee.
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