The single concrete policy proposal to emerge from the weekend Liberal convention - a resolution urging the legalization of marijuana - is being touted as "controversial." But it shouldn't be. For the last quarter century, a majority of Canadians have supported the decriminalization of simple marijuana possession. Since then, thousands of AIDS patients and other sick Canadians have procured government certificates that permit them to use marijuana for pain and nausea relief. Over the last decade, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, the Association of Police Chiefs and the Canadian Bar Association have all come out in favour of decriminalization. A committee of the Canadian Senate even went one step further, proposing outright marijuana legalization. [continues 543 words]
To the Editor, Re: Marijuana prohibition a bizarre, expensive approach, Guest Comment, Dec. 17. Marijuana eradication efforts are no doubt well-intended, but ultimately counterproductive. The drug war's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand causes big money to grow on little trees. Canadian tax dollars are wasted on anti-drug strategies that only make marijana growing more profitable. In 2002, the Canadian Senate offered a common sense alternative to prohibition when the Special Committee on Illegal Drugs concluded that marijuana is relatively benign, marijuana prohibition contributes to organized crime, and law enforcement efforts have little impact on patterns of use. [continues 106 words]
Regarding columnist Jim Nelson's thoughtful Dec. 16 column, marijuana eradication efforts are no doubt well-intended but ultimately counterproductive. The drug war's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand causes big money to grow on little trees. Canadian tax dollars are wasted on anti-drug strategies that only make marijuana growing more profitable. In 2002, the Canadian senate offered a common-sense alternative to prohibition when the Special Committee on Illegal Drugs concluded that marijuana is relatively benign, marijuana prohibition contributes to organized crime and law enforcement efforts have little impact on patterns of use. [continues 113 words]
The federal government is anticipating a constitutional challenge over the mandatory minimum sentences it plans to impose as part of the omnibus crime bill, documents obtained by The Globe and Mail suggest. A piece of the legislation will require judges to issue minimum sentences for some drug-related offences, a change that is expected to dramatically increase the number of people in provincial and federal prisons. The change will also ratchet up pressure on the country's courts, as people who might otherwise plead guilty instead choose a trial to try to avoid the mandated time behind bars. [continues 430 words]
What happens after crooks finally get out of jail? It has taken almost six years and a new format, but the federal Conservative government passed its controversial tough-on-crime legislation Monday, Dec. 5. The Safe Streets and Communities Act, formerly Bill C-10, is a collection of nine bills the previous minority Harper government had failed, since 2006, to pass separately. The bill passed easily by a margin of 157 to 127 in the majority Conservative House of Commons despite mounting controversy over some proposed changes. [continues 1988 words]
It was a chance meeting aboard a quiet passenger ferry that would eventually send heavily armed police crashing through the doors of a Metro Vancouver home and forever change Canadian drug-enforcement policy. The July 2011 raid was significant not only because it netted five arrests for suspected drug production but because it was the culmination of three years of lobbying the federal government to make illegal the possession of chemicals used to produce methamphetamine and ecstasy. That chance 2007 meeting on the Bowen Island ferry between John Weston, now MP for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, and Cpl. Richard De Jong of the North Vancouver RCMP had all the makings of a Hollywood screenplay: [continues 725 words]
The Starphoenix recently reported that the war on drugs has claimed an astonishing 45,000-plus Mexican lives in recent years, rivalling conventional warfare deaths in countries such as Afghanistan. Undoubtedly most have been killed with U.s.-made guns, which are widespread in Mexico because illicit American arms are often traded for illegal drugs. The war on drugs has been a complete failure, failing to stop the proliferation of illicit substances globally and empowering international criminal and terrorist organizations. The vast majority of the world's heroin supply originates in Afghanistan, which is a recipe for disaster and cause for western intervention as long as an illicit market remains for the drug. Although Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has called for an end to the war on drugs, virtually no politicians or political parties in Canada or the United States share his position. Ottawa will spend billions on new prisons and law enforcement initiatives as a result of the new omnibus crime legislation. Yet all the money being spent on enforcement and prisons flies in the face of studies done by such diverse academic organizations such as the Cato Institute in the U.S., and public groups such as the Senate special committee on illegal drugs, which in 2002 called for a rethinking of Canada's drug policy. More public figures should be advocating for regulation and taxation of drugs. It's a far better alternative to policies that have made the illegal drug trade one of the world's most profitable and vicious industries. Nathan Holowaty Saskatoon [end]
Over 500 New Prison Spaces Slated for Manitoba As the federal government's bill C-10, aka the Safe Streets and Communities Act, is poised to make its way to the Senate, opposition of the omnibus crime bill shows no sign of slowing down. The bill is currently in its third and final reading in the House of Commons, before going to a final vote on Monday. On Nov. 25, Justin Pich=E9, an assistant professor of sociology at Memorial University, gave a lecture at the U of M via Skype titled =93Building Our Way Towards Safer Communities? Prison Capacity Expansion and the Need for an Alternative Approach.=94 [continues 802 words]
Re: Marijuana problem, Nov. 25. As a parent who advocates legally regulating cannabis, I am perplexed by parents who blame cannabis for leading their children astray, but who nonetheless staunchly defend the status quo. Columnist Kelly Egan shared the account of a teen who began using cannabis when he was 14 and soon became a daily user, joining the three per cent of students who "may have" a cannabis "dependency." Evidently, prohibition does not prevent teens from obtaining cannabis, nor discourage them from using it. [continues 163 words]
Critics are having a hard time understanding why the Conservatives would draft crime legislation that will see teenagers sent to prison for sharing marijuana with their friends. It's like 'cracking a nut with a sledgehammer,' one tells CHRIS COBB. He's an 18-year-old the law defines as a man. He comes from a solid middle-class family. He's a smart, hardworking person with great potential and he's never been in trouble with the law. Like millions of Canadians teenagers before him, and at least a quarter of his contemporaries, he's going through a marijuana phase: something that reliable justice statistics show he will eventually grow out of, just as many police officers, politicians, doctors, teachers and lawyers grew out of. [continues 2771 words]
Rookie MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay will be involved in trying to pass a new sweeping crime bill introduced by her Conservative government in Ottawa this week. Elected in Delta-Richmond East in May, Findlay was appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice shortly after the federal election. That means she'll "be in the thick of it" with the new crime bill. She's also vice-chair of a justice committee that will go over the comprehensive legislation once it gets second reading in the House of Commons. [continues 439 words]
LEDUC - The tie Leduc addiction counsellor Gene LeBlanc makes between the consequences of legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, when compared to the illegal drug marijuana, has been a contentious issue lately for scientists and lawmakers. According to the article 'Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse', published in 2007 by the respected British medical journal The Lancet, marijuana was ranked as causing less harm and being less addictive then both tobacco and alcohol. As in Canada, marijuana use in Britain is illegal, while tobacco and alcohol use is legal. The report noted the contradiction of having the more harmful substances tobacco and alcohol legal while less harmful substances are illegal, with laws seemingly based only on which substances are more widely socially accepted. [continues 802 words]
Leduc addiction counsellor Gene LeBlanc, who sees hundreds of addicts every year, is on the side of what an Angus Reid poll pegged as a slim majority of Canadians who favour the legalization of the drug marijuana. LeBlanc is against marijuana prohibition, and doesn't think the current drug laws appear very rational, with drugs such as alcohol and tobacco on one side and marijuana on the other side. An Angus Reid poll in 2010 found that 53 per cent of Canadians support the counsellor's position that legalization is the way to go. [continues 1112 words]
The Canadian government has agreed to supply the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with surveillance data collected from 22 radar feeds as American officials struggle to combat the use of lowflying aircraft to smuggle drugs across the Canada-U.S. border. In testimony before a Senate panel, Customs and Border Protection commissioner Alan Bersin said the Canadian data will be sent to the U.S. Air and Marine Operations Centre in Riverside, Calif., starting in November. The Canadian data will be used to detect "unlawful entry into the United States, unannounced entry," Bersin told reporters following a hearing of the Senate judiciary committee on border security. "The ability of small aircraft to enter the United States undetected presents a multi-faceted threat." [continues 135 words]
Airport suspected cross-border smuggling centre The drone of small aircraft is well known to anyone living just west of Calgary - but it seems a different kind of buzz may be fuelling single-engine flights at Springbank Airport. It comes as a shock even for those familiar with the busy airstrip, but Springbank is suspected to be a major hub for drug smuggling to and from the U.S. At least that's what Canada's Senate believes. "It's a primary drug entry point into the country," Senator Colin Kenny told the Sun. [continues 769 words]
Pot growers will get six months in jail if they have a grow-op with six or more plants, if the federal Conservatives can pass a tough-on-crime bill, says Abbotsford MP Ed Fast. Since taking office, Stephen Harper's government has been trying to establish a minimum jail sentence for growers, Fast said. "This is a very important bill for us," he said. "Just look at Abbotsford - the number one threat is drug-related and gang-related crime." Fast is chairman of the Justice Committee which reviews all criminal justice legislation. He said the government brought forward similar legislation in an earlier bill called C-15. It passed Parliament, but it was "gutted" by the Senate, which was then dominated by the Liberal party. He said the Senate wanted to have minimum jail time for grows of 200 plants. That was not acceptable to the Conservatives. [continues 1239 words]
The federal Conservative government has been criticized lately for plans to build more prisons throughout the country. Personally, I'm thrilled. Just as hospitals are great places for people who are sick or injured, so too can prisons be great places for people who have made others dead, injured or poorer. Certainly, a big part of the equation is making sure the prisons are designed like hospitals, in that they have opportunities for their residents to better their situations in life so as to avoid repeat visits: addiction treatment, educational opportunities, family counselling, therapy, mental and spiritual health programs or even plastic or reconstructive surgery -- research from the University of Texas (and others) demonstrates a positive relationship between cosmetic surgery and a significant decrease in recidivism. [continues 719 words]
I would like to respond to the appallingly inaccurate opinion piece in Thursday's paper entitled, Marijuana Users Seek Elusive Legitimacy, by stating that there is nothing elusive about the legitimacy of many members of our community who are federally licensed to possess and produce medical cannabis. The only elusive thing for them is a reliable supply of safe, affordable and effective medical cannabis. The single government supplier, Prairie Plant Systems, only grows one strain of weak, irradiated, pulverized cannabis that most people do not want. Even if they did, they would be ineligible many months of the year due to long processing delays caused by the embarrassingly understaffed Medical Marijuana Access Division of Health Canada. [continues 182 words]
The decision by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to stand against a crime bill that he once supported was a blow to the federal government's justice agenda -- one that allows the Conservatives to highlight the policy gap between the two federal parties. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson held a news conference Thursday to lambaste Mr. Ignatieff for his party's about-face on Bill S-10, which would impose mandatory minimum sentences for some drug crimes, including the cultivation of as few as six marijuana plants if the crop was intended for sale. [continues 599 words]
Liberals Won't Support It The Conservative government's controversial bill that would impose mandatory jail time for offenders caught growing a handful of marijuana plants appears headed to the trash can. The Liberals announced Wednesday they will not support Bill S-10, which has already been passed by the Senate. "I'm very disappointed that they have had this complete flip-flop," Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told Postmedia News. The Liberals, who supported previous versions of the bill, now say it would excessively punish some people for minor offences and would cost too much to implement because it will jam prisons that are already filled to the brink. The Conservatives have said they will spend $2 billion over the next five years to expand prisons. [continues 509 words]
