Recent comments

I don't speak for this website, but the reason for it being on this page in my view, is because of the allegations made by supporters of this proposed bill of the connection between drug trafficking and sex work. There have been accusations that people in the drug trade are forcing women to engage in sex work against their will. I think it's important to have an area to discuss these accusations.

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It is legal to grow hemp in Canada. The one hemp farmer that I have some personal knowledge of is growing it for animal bedding. That is the only market he has found for it. There are some small niche markets that are producing food and health products as well.

When the big industries in the states pushed for a ban on marijuana that would include cannabis for medicing and hemp for industrial purposes, their intent was to replace it with products that they made themselves.

Papermills are built to deal with wood fibre, not hemp. Their would likely have to be a huge refit in the industry.

The entire textile industry has been outsourced to Asia and it focused on cheap. That means man-made fibres, not natural. People are spoiled. Hemp doesn't come out of the dryer smooth and ready to wear. Who's got time to go back to ironing their clothes.

Ropes, tarps, bags, all made from plastic now. Hemp ropes rot, so do the tarps. Burlap bags, haven't seen those for awhile either.

In the time that has elapsed since prohibition began, the big plastic and chemical industries have done their best to supplant hemp in industrial uses.

I was one of the lucky ones that received that poll call. I recall that the questions were quite insistent, that I had to tell the lady many times that I do not feel unsafe, that I can and do walk the streets at night in my home town etc. It was obvious that they were angling the questions to derive the answers they wanted. I did not give them what they wanted, which seemed to surprise the younger lady who called me, especially since I am approaching retirement age. They must have a lot of seniors who fall into their little trap. What a bunch of malarky.

Victoria police chief Jamie Graham is not a friend of human rights, see:
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/12330/section/7
Nor is his partner in crime, Bob Rich - they both covered up the missing DT Eastside murdered women, along with coroner Larry Campbell, who also pretended to be against prohibition (he knew how to use and abuse crackheads when he paid a bunch of them $10 each to go vote in the 2000 (or 2001?) city election).

Bob Rich, was promoted to police chief of Abbotsford, making it Canada's murder capital and gangster haven. He said anyone, including teens and women, in Abbotsford who is contected to drugs of any kind (including pot) is target for the (hired) gangs. Both Graham and Rich are drug prohibition whores.

Those "pig farmer" murders, blamed unfairly on Willy Pickton, happened from the police (who brought their old cars to the farm to be repaired and cleaned) along with the politicians and hells angels who patronized Piggies Palace. Willy's brother, a hells angel didn't even have to testify and Willy wasn't allowed to!

Graham and Rich and other police chiefs are paid big bucks with our tax dollars to serve the shadow governments with their black balaclava cops and drug propaganda to appease all the brainwashed pot-phobic neocons and serve the real drug pushers - now the BC gov't staffs/pays Pharmacists to work the phone lines for the 811 Nurses Help citizens' line.

OK, so the nerdy kid took his ball home and wouldn't play because the 'big kids' were picking on him, not letting him make up the rules to suit himself as the game went on etc. He told his mommy that the 'big kids' were mean to him and that they didn't 'play fair'. His mommy gave him milk and cookies and comfort. When his dad came home, he moaned about his sissy kid and ordered him to return to the schoolyard the next day with his ball. When he did so, the other kids did not want to play with him according to his rules, so there they are again, being mean to him. Wonder when he runs home to mommy again?

By such comments by this Board it has exposed it's own obsolence. Personally, the legalization of cannabis would not satisfy me. I wish to see the the new reality (which is not new) of the benefits of Cannabis result in the criminal prosecution of political prohibitionists from around the globe and including this United Nations Board. Interpol and the International Court in the Hague could prove invaluable in bringing these criminals to justice. To do so in Canada is merely a step in the right direction.
H.B. Webster
Calgary

Why so few? Seventy dispensaries for a city the size of LA? How many pharmacies are there in LA? I would think that a similar number of dispensaries would be appropriate.

Just a highlight from somewhere else I wanted to post here...

"Government House Leader Jay Hill (Prince George-Peace River, B.C.) said the main legislative priority for when Parliament returns will be the budget and economic issues. In terms of the 36 bills that died, the government intends to reintroduce Bill C-6, on consumer product safety, as well as Bill C-15, concerning drug-related offences, in their original forms."

If we look at nature if you press a tree too hard one way it will swing back the other way. Or what goes up comes down.

SO from a purely enforcement standpoint consistent enforcement regardless of the race color class would initially increase the number or arrests. However when JUdges children and police and doctors kids start getting charged we will see real action.

Then I think it will begin to seem more like a human problem and no longer a hidden prohibition. Currently we are seeing an lax approach in marijuana convictions and an increase in other drugs. I don't believe the police are enforcing activly for i would always see the same sellers at the same locations. Many have stated they would love to be arrested since they have been so paranoid for so long. I always wonder why when it is so easy to buy there are so little arrests.

Police know who the problem people are yet fail to act. Communities fail to inform. I have tried and police don't even listen.

At one time smoking crack was seen in the prison system as similar to being a pedophile. Now it is normal for anyone in jail to have a history of crack and admit it openly.

I think we can learn from tobacco it is legal but it is declining. From education and education and education. We need more of the same with some patience.

In summary if we are to enforce then enforce if not then not to go half way is wasting time and money. This middle of the road will only lead to further problems and a continuation and worsening of the status quo.

It almost seems thats what we want.

The events involving LEOs who engage in activities that offend even the most basic sensibilities of the justice they were hired to defend from persons like themselves is something social psychologists and historians expect when a society doesn't take any special steps to remove from police rolls this one particularly corrosive personality complex or syndrome - the RWA-SDO, as they are known among mental health professionals.

What makes them so dangerous to so many and so much is the self-image they have of themselves, while the authority figure itself is afforded almost reverential deference by conservative society. While they believe themselves to be righteous defenders of good social values, in fact they represent a person who is able to deny their own faults while projecting the damage they do back out onto others. This "other" is usually from a group ostracised by conservative society and so is very often someone who most suffers as a result of our allowing such socially stunted and intellectually incapable persons to wield the power to effect another person's life in any way whatsoever.

We have long known of the authoritarians increased fear, hostility, ambiguity avoidance and need for certainty that compels them to think in black and white, simplistic terms allowing them to feel safe from threats arising from unknown places in their lives.
In a conservative politician this might result in little more than a determination to maintain the status quo through thick or thin.

But in a LEO it results in premature decisions about someone's guilt or innocence based on these same conservative preconceptions. For this and many more reasons I'm unable to list here I feel it is long past time that high RWA-SDO scores should disqualify a person from wearing a badge or being given responsibilities requiring good cognitive skills. Conservatives have been found repeatedly (due their objections to any research saying so) to be lacking in integrative complexity, abstract reasoning skills, social/intellectual skills allowing the complex reasoning necessary for social judgments requiring empathy.

"Conservatism is not the doctrine of the intellectual elite or of the more intelligent segments of the population, but the reverse. By every measure available to us, conservative beliefs are found most frequently among the uninformed, the poorly educated, and the less intelligent" (p. 38). McClosky, H. (1958). Conservatism and personality. American Political Science Review, 52, 27-45.

What it's about is for non-conservative folks of all shapes and stripes finally saying that they're not going to let the minority of social conservatives pass and enforce laws that appeal to their own misguided sense of what is right and wrong in life based on their childish beliefs in what constitutes "sin" and what it takes for them to not die when they're dead! They make THIS life miserable for everyone else because they don't have the intellect or social skills that came to the rest of us after having successfully passed out of the authoritarian worldview we all have as young children. As such, they remain trapped with the lowered empathy and hyper-simplistic, black & white fears of a child, yet the strength and aggression of an adult.

Conservatism is not an idealogy! It is a psychological syndrome responsible for the vast majority of wars and terrorist acts. Don't take my word for it...look at the data compiled by the DHS counter-terrorism panel or the Okla. Corrections branch.

http://www.doc.state.ok.us/offenders/ocjrc/95/950725C.htm

http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/jost.glaser.political-conservatism-...