COLUMBUS -- Gov. John Kasich said he has voted against state Issue 3 and voiced concern about the impact the marijuana legalization amendment could have on efforts to combat drug abuse. "I just think it sends the wrong message," he said. "When you run around telling kids not to do drugs, young kids, and then they read that we might legalize marijuana, I just think it's a mixed message. It's not good." Backers of Issue 3, however, said the proposal to legalize and regulate marijuana in Ohio would actually help the state in its efforts to counter opioid addiction. [continues 412 words]
Smiley-faced cookies are returning to local Tim Hortons coffee shops next week to help raise money for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program. It is a program which members of the Timmins Police Service and Ontario Provincial Police will once again be conducting with students in local schools starting next week. The Smile Cookie campaign has been a fundraising initiative in Timmins since 2003, and in that time it has raised $160,000 for the DARE program. This year, local police officials are hoping to raise another $8,000 from cookie sales. [continues 267 words]
Why Marijuana Decriminalization Is Inevitable IT seems appropriate that an organization called DARE would do something bold. Grow and behold: Marijuana plants in Arlington, Wash., where recreational pot is legal. That's what seemed to happen last week, when Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the wellknown anti-drug group - which has schoolchildren sign pledges to abstain from drugs and report on their parents if they see them engaging in drug use - seemingly did the unthinkable. It posted an op-ed calling for the legalization of marijuana. [continues 633 words]
Drug Laws Have Been Liberalised From Portland to Portugal. Why Is New Zealand Missing the (Magic) Bus? Philip Matthews Talks With Decriminalisation Advocate Ross Bell. Drug law reform. Is there any better example of a heart versus head issue? Logic and rationality tells you that the system does not work, that drugs are a medical issue not a criminal one. But your gut says lock all the junkies and potheads up. It is Ross Bell's job to wrestle with these dilemmas. For 11 years he has been chief executive of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, a charitable trust charged with preventing and reducing harms caused by drug use. [continues 2104 words]
Timmins Police Service continues to be at the forefront of efforts to keep local children from getting involved with illegal drugs. Its DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program - delivered to students at the Grade 6 level - has been having a positive impact in our community for a number of years. And now Timmins Police Service has begun to reinforce that message at the Grade 8 level with its Keeping It Real program. "The instructors are a little bit more serious about telling the students about the challenges they are going to face going into high school," Chief Gauthier noted during a recent interview. [continues 273 words]
Last Thursday, Hank Green was one of three Youtube celebrities tasked with making President Obama seem accessible to millennials. Green asked Obama about marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington during an interview in the White House. After assuring Colorado and Washington marijuana residents the feds won't go kamikaze on their crop, Obama called U.S. drug policy "counterproductive," suggesting a public health approach to drug use. It was the first time in awhile I'd heard him talk about the issue. Despite, speaking to new people, however, the stance is nothing revolutionary from Obama . The President ran on this approach in 2008, when he promised to steer the Department of Justice away from raiding medical marijuana patients. [continues 647 words]
Substance Abuse And Mental Health Task Force Outlines Its Initiatives From Past Year The leaders of the Kenora Substance Abuse and Mental Health Task Force's five different pillars stood up at their AGM on Thursday morning, Nov. 27, to lay out what their branch of the task force has been up to for the past year and what they plan to do in the next several months. The task force has adopted a five-pillar approach to combating the variety of social ills in Kenora that stem from substance abuse and mental health problems in the community. The pillars are treatment, harm reduction, enforcement, prevention/education, and the newest pillar adopted last year: housing. [continues 1022 words]
After voters in Washington and Colorado voted to legalize marijuana in 2012, Alison Holcomb would tell pot activists it was too early to say that the rest of America was ready to accept the drug. Holcomb, an American Civil Liberties Union official who managed Washington's legalization campaign, recalled that nearly a dozen states - including Oregon - decriminalized possession of small amounts of the drug in the 1970s. "And then the '80s came and the pendulum swung back hard," she said, as President Ronald Reagan called marijuana "probably the most dangerous drug in America" and stepped up federal enforcement against all illegal drugs. [continues 1235 words]
Resource shortage, increased school enrolment strains RCMP school outreach program Fewer resources, the opening of a new high school and a growing school population has led to the discontinuation of the DARE program for schools in Grande Prairie this year. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program has traditionally been offered to Grade 6 students through 10 weeks of classroom instruction from the Grande Prairie's RCMP school resource officer (SRO). But following the transfer of Cst. Jennifer Fraser, who is in the process of moving to St. Albert, the Grande Prairie RCMP detachment is down to three SROs, forcing a re-evaluation of their priorities within the public and Catholic school districts. [continues 731 words]
Paraphernalia Shops Abound In Pike, And So Do Arrests: Plastic Bags, Lighters And Wrapping Paper Can Also Lead To Charges MATAMORAS - Those plastic ziplock bags at the supermarket might look harmless. But in Pennsylvania, they can lead to serious criminal charges if found alongside a stash of drugs. In The Keystone State, any wrapper believed to be connected to drug use or storage can lead to misdemeanor drug paraphernalia charges that potentially carry higher sentences than the drugs themselves. The dispositions in Pike County Court that appear regularly in the Courier usually contain such charges. [continues 959 words]
Former West Vancouver police chief and one-time solicitor general Kash Heed has a new line of work - offering advice to commercial medicinal marijuana growers. "I'm a security consultant and policy advisor," said Heed this week about his role in one of the country's greenest new industries. Heed said he sometimes accompanies marijuana company bosses as they explain their business to local governments and law enforcement officials. But he added he's choosy about which companies he gets involved with, and has turned down business from operations that were "not a good fit." [continues 330 words]
Six bills are being proposed by the state Senate Democrats in an effort to prevent heroin addiction and target a problem that is making its way across the Empire State. Members of the state Senate Democratic Conference held a press event Tuesday to discuss their proposals aimed at improving health insurance for heroin-related issues, improving drug education and increasing penalties and the number of community rehabilitation facilities. They featured the story of Patricia Farrell of Colonie, whose daughter died because of heroin just days before her 19th birthday. The Colonie Central High School graduate, who got her high school diploma early at the age of 16, was attending classes at a local community college as she figured out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Farrell said that somewhere along the way her daughter, Laree, tried heroin and became hooked. [continues 265 words]
SPRING VALLEY A car used by drug dealers will now help educate young people against using drugs. The black Chrysler PT Cruiser now carries the Spring Valley Police Department orange DARE logo, for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. The nationwide program involves police officers working with students to discourage substance abuse. The Rockland County District Attorney's Office seized the four-door car during an investigation that led to multiple arrests, said Officer Francis Brooke, the department's DARE cop also assigned to Spring Valley High School as a school resource officer. [continues 108 words]
On Jan. 1, thousands of Coloradans eagerly lined up to make their first legal purchase of recreational marijuana. Amendment 64, a ballot measure that passed in 2012 with 55 percent of Colorado voters in favor, legalized the recreational use of marijuana and permitted adults aged 21 years or older to purchase up to an ounce. The law also places the onus of regulating the manufacture, distribution and sale of marijuana on the state government. This unprecedented experiment in governmental regulation of weed is still in its infancy, but all signs are indicating that what's good for pot enthusiasts is good for government - and more than likely good for society. [continues 508 words]
Prince Edward Island RCMP have decided to take an international drug education program and tailor it to suit the needs of Island youth. The move makes a lot of sense because the one currently being offered in Island schools is based in the United States. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) is a comprehensive school-based drug prevention program taught by police officers to children at the Grade 5 level. The DARE officers partner with classroom teachers to build protective factors for children by providing information and social skills needed to live drug- and violence-free. [continues 384 words]
SUMMERSIDE - An RCMP program on drug abuse education in Island schools will continue. RCMP Sgt. Andrew Blackadar, media relations officer for L Division, said the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program is being looked at to see if an alternative can be developed for Island schools. "We're re-evaluating the DARE program," he said. "We will be, at some point, replacing it with some other drug awareness program." Blackadar said DARE is not an RCMP program and actually comes from the United States. [continues 653 words]
The Order of Royal Purple presented a cheque for $1,500 towards the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program that the RCMP will offer in three Peace Region schools. "Each dare graduation requires a sponsor, whether that be from a local business or one of the community groups, like the Order of the Royal Purple," said constable Rachel Geense. "They've been kind enough to cover the three classes that will be receiving the D.A.R.E. program this year." [continues 120 words]
Somewhere, Dick Nixon is smiling. What is up with the media and marijuana? Recreational cannabis went on sale in Colorado on Jan. 1, support for decriminalization is crescendoing, and the mainstream, especially on the right, has gone totally batshit crazy. The commentators, such as they are, sound like my parents' generation back in the 1960s, or worse, a leftover DARE program from the Reagan years. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote one that, honestly, I thought was from the Onion or Daily Currant until I noticed the source. Brooks' logic seemed to be that he tried it when he was young, had fun until he got too high once before teaching a class, and has decided that since he quit, the government has a moral obligation to keep cannabis illegal and should encourage people to go to museums instead. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus chimed in that it should remain illegal, but said if she's in Colorado, she'll be buying some kush. [continues 789 words]
Some Have Never Smoked Marijuana. Others Partook Before They Had Jobs and Kids. Now That It's Legal, They Want to Give It a Try. for Others, Though, Its Legal Status Doesn't Change Their Attitude. As the new year approached, Courtney smoked marijuana for the first time, after a lifetime of being against it. "I never smoked before," said Courtney, a young mother who wants to be identified by first name only. "I always said, 'I'm a good kid, I'm not going to do that because it's illegal.' " [continues 1221 words]
As a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy, I am responding to the Dec. 27 editorial, "Marijuana and minors." Attitudes toward marijuana are changing because Americans have come to realize that our government has been lying about marijuana for decades. The original reefer madness myths have all been thoroughly discredited. This new reality-based perception is not necessarily a bad thing. For decades, school-based drug prevention efforts have been dominated by sensationalist programs like Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Good intentions are no substitute for effective drug education. Independent evaluations of DARE have found the program to be ineffective or counterproductive. The scare tactics used do more harm than good. Students who realize they've been lied to about marijuana may make the mistake of assuming that harder drugs like methamphetamine or prescription narcotics are relatively harmless, too. This is a recipe for disaster. [continues 51 words]
