Last Thursday evening, I chaired the first meeting of the newly formed Vermont chapter of Women Grow. For those who are not familiar with Women Grow, it is perhaps the fastest-growing organization in the cannabis industry and was profiled in a Newsweek magazine cover story from September 2015 that gives an overview of women taking over the billion-dollar cannabis industry. Frustrations in the room were being shared that Vermonters are not able at this time to consume, grow and build businesses around the cannabis industry, except for the rare few. [continues 536 words]
Women, Determined To Stop Overdose Deaths, Will Be 'voice For Canadian Families' A group of Canadian mothers who have lost children to narcotics plans to take on the world after a successful first step at home. Calling themselves mumsDU, short for Moms united and mandated to saving the lives of Drug Users, the four Canadian women have been invited by the Canadian government to accompany its own representatives to New York. Next week, the mothers will attend a United Nations General Assembly special session that is set to examine policies on illegal drugs. It's expected to attract representatives from more than 190 countries, as well as many non-government organizations. [continues 528 words]
An Edmonton mother is part of a Canadian contingent attending a global drug policy summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York next week to urge governments to forego the "war on drugs" and embrace harm reduction. The harm reduction approach promotes policies and programs that support and reduce the risks and dangers drug users face, rather than prohibiting the drug itself and punishing users. Lorna Thomas's 24-year-old son, Alex Thomas-Haug, died by suicide in 2012. Thomas-Haug was a welder and snowboarder who suffered from depression. His mother later found out he'd also been using cocaine. [continues 412 words]
When it comes to the epidemic of African-Americans dying at the hands of police, people who are asked to consider the issue often get stuck on whether the person in question had it coming. What was he or she doing at the time? Running away? Resisting arrest? And if so, doesn't that prove he or she was guilty of something? And from there, it's a short hop to the conclusion that if only this person had been doing the right things - staying off the streets, keeping out of trouble, not hanging around with the wrong people or doing exactly as the police demanded at the moment of a heated encounter - tragedy could have been averted. Yeah, right. In a perfect world, mothers and fathers living in low-income communities with crumbling schools and few employment opportunities would heroically manage to raise children who were able to stay away from trouble with alcohol, drugs or gang-type behavior even though these things are all around them. [continues 510 words]
She Claims Mounties Performed 'Inappropriate Search' After Patting Her Down for Drugs A woman is suing the RCMP for $100,000 after alleging a male officer inappropriately searched near her private parts while looking for drugs during a traffic stop near Sherwood Park. According to a statement of claim filed in Edmonton's Court of Queen's Bench on Feb. 23, Jenny Brown, Bob Erb and three others were in a vehicle pulled over by the RCMP on the Sherwood Park Freeway on Feb. 25, 2014. [continues 394 words]
But Doctors Need Court Order to Give Results to Police INDIANAPOLIS - A surge in heroin and painkiller abuse - and a related spike in the number of drug-dependent newborns - has doctors calling for drug tests for all pregnant women. But, first, doctors and health officials want lawmakers to shield addicted, expectant mothers from punishment. The Legislature has taken a first step, quietly passing a measure to prohibit doctors from giving results of a pregnant woman's drug tests to police without a court order. [continues 670 words]
The parents of a young woman whose 2010 murder remains unsolved have alleged their daughter was a confidential informant for Phoenix police, a position that may have placed her in direct contact with her killer. On Tuesday, the family of Nicole Glass filed a wrongful-death suit against the city of Phoenix for what they say were officers' failure to warn the 27-year-old about the dangers of their arrangement. The lawsuit alleges negligence on the part of the recruiting officers and their supervisors, all labeled as John Does for now. [continues 1020 words]
Retired judge gave hospital advice in early '80s and '90s; province sees no conflict Questions are being raised about the retired judge chosen by the provincial government to head a two-year commission reviewing child protection cases that used flawed hair-test results from the Hospital for Sick Children's Motherisk laboratory. Justice Judith Beaman has prior legal connections to Sick Kids, the Star has learned. While working as a lawyer in private practice in the late 1980s and early 1990s, she advised the hospital's Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect team. The SCAN team would later come under fire for its actions during that period, after a public inquiry looked into cases by disgraced pathologist Charles Smith, who worked closely with SCAN members and whose findings led in some instances to wrongful convictions. [continues 743 words]
Modern feminism boils down to two main angles. The first is a movement driven by equality: equal pay, equal representation, equal access to power and position. The second seeks to elevate the status of roles commonly perceived as feminine, recognizing the value of caretaking in society and increased social stature. Women who attempt to achieve both know how difficult that feat can be because achieving one tends to preclude the other. Either women step into traditionally male positions that are more demanding on their time and energy or they commit to more nurturing roles that disassociate them from money and power. Even if a woman is willing to go for it all, her efforts are likely stymied by an inflexible society that struggles to accommodate shifting gender roles. [continues 789 words]
Province trying to determine role flawed drug tests played in kids' removal from birth families Up to 300 children are stuck in Ontario's adoption process as the province reviews custody cases that involved evidence from the discontinued Motherisk drug testing program. The Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies has halted 200 to 300 adoption cases where children left their birth families at least partly because of drug tests from the disgraced Motherisk lab at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, said OACAS executive director Mary Ballantyne. [continues 788 words]
'This Is a Canada-Wide Situation,' Says N.S. Man Who Lost Custody of Child Because of Lab's Tests When William McIntyre reached out to the commission looking into child protection cases that used hair test results from the Hospital for Sick Children's Motherisk laboratory, he was shocked to learn that the review did not apply to him. Motherisk hair testing was done in cases that dealt with some of McIntyre and Natacha LeRoy's children. The Nova Scotia residents are among an unknown number of Canadians who have been affected by Motherisk hair test results - described by an independent review as "inadequate and unreliable" - but who don't have the possibility of having their cases reviewed by commissioner Judith Beaman because they do not reside in Ontario. [continues 1091 words]
Ryan Norris spent years trying to find help for his mental illness and addiction before dying of suspected fentanyl overdose Ryan Norris, described as a kind-hearted person and once promising athlete, spent his last days trying to get help for his addiction. His spirits lifted, his mother Christine says, when he heard a space had become available at the Sage Health Centre in Kamloops, one of several treatment centres where he was wait-listed. His bags were packed when, about a week before he died, he received a call that the space was no longer available. He became despondent, and left the house in what his mother believes was a search for heroin to ease his pain. [continues 992 words]
The Kootenay chapter of Women Grow held an educational evening to 'connect, educate, and inspire the next generation of cannabis industry leaders' The Kootenay chapter of Women Grow, a cannabis advocacy organization already established in Vancouver and Toronto, hosted a well-attended educational evening at the Hume Hotel last week, aiming to "connect, educate,inspire and empower the next generation of cannabis industry leaders." "The war on drugs is ridiculous," keynote speaker Jim Leslie of the Kootenays Medicine Tree dispensary in Nelson told the crowd, which consisted of approximately 150 people. A ten-year veteran of Canada Border Services, he was on the frontlines of drug enforcement and was disillusioned by his time there. [continues 911 words]
On behalf of the Maryland Cannabis Industry Association, I would like thank to Hannah Byron for her leadership of the Natalie M. LaPrade Medical Cannabis Commission ("Byron to resign as head of Maryland cannabis commission," Dec. 2). What is truly remarkable are the strides the Maryland program has made under her leadership over the last year. Many people do not realize that the first medical cannabis bill was introduced in Maryland in 1980 by former state delegate and current Baltimore County Councilman Wade Kach. The journey for Maryland patients began in 1980, but the momentum for getting medicine into the hands of patients really gathered steam in 2014, when Dels. Dan Morhaim and Cheryl Glenn and Sens. Jamie Raskin and Bobby Zirkin won the support of 177 of Maryland's 188 legislators to approve this sensible, compassionate legislation. [continues 139 words]
Court finds woman under duress when she made smuggling attempt An Edmonton grandmother who tried to smuggle drugs inside her vagina into the Edmonton Institution has been found not guilty. Linda Ethal Sheridan, 62, admitted she brought the drugs to the maximum-security prison for her incarcerated son, but argued the offences were committed under duress because she was told her son would be killed if she didn't transport the contraband. "It was a pressure situation, and, you know, I folded to the pressure and I shouldn't have, obviously," Sheridan told a police officer after she was caught. [continues 423 words]
In the last few years, America's out-of-control incarceration boom has finally started to get the sustained public scrutiny, and condemnation, that it deserves. But one key element of the story still receives too little attention: the number of women in the nation's prisons and jails. Men account for more than 90 percent of those behind bars. But the number of female inmates, most of whom are mothers, has been growing at an even faster rate than the overall prison population. In 1980 there were just over 15,000 women in state prisons. By 2010 there were nearly 113,000. When jail inmates are added in, there are about 206,000 women currently serving time - nearly one-third of all female prisoners in the world. [continues 406 words]
A Rehoboth Beach couple - the wife a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, the husband a disabled veteran taking medication for schizophrenia - say Delaware State Police officers beat and used a stun gun on the husband after finding him giving his wife a sponge bath when the family home they were in was raided in a search for drugs in June 2014. The couple, Ruther and Lisa Hayes, allege in a federal lawsuit that police commanders failed to train officers in the "constitutional bounds and limits concerning the use of force," especially when it came to interactions with disabled people. [continues 1431 words]
Son Died of Fentanyl Overdose Clutching a framed photograph of her son, Petra Schulz made a passionate plea before nearly 100 people about the need for policy change on all levels to deal with the fentanyl epidemic in Alberta. Schulz was one of six speakers Monday at the annual International Overdose Awareness Day on the steps of City Hall. Schulz's 25-year-old son Danny Schulz died from an accidental fentanyl overdose in 2014. While the provincial government has spearheaded a one-year pilot program to provide take-home naloxone kits to Albertans who are at high risk of opioid overdose, Schulz said the lifesaving kits need to be more widely available and should be available to people without a prescription, such as a parent who has a child with an addiction. Already there have been 600 emergency department visits related to opioid overdoses in Edmonton this year. [continues 179 words]
Crown Drops Bid to Block Treatment LEDUC - Alberta appears to have stepped back from a fight to stop a four-year-old girl from receiving a marijuana-derived treatment for her seizures. Brian Fish, lawyer for the girl's mother, says the Crown has withdrawn a request for an order that would have forced his client to stop giving her daughter cannabidiol and submit her to conventional treatment. The mother says traditional drugs were ineffective against the girl's seizures and doctors were suggesting brain surgery as an alternative. [continues 191 words]
A drug charge against a local business owner laid in June 2014 was stayed Monday morning in a Brantford courtroom. Cheryl MacLellan, 57, had been charged with producing a Schedule II substance after police responded to an alarm at a Burford building on Rutherland Street. According to a spokesperson from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, the decision to stay or withdraw charges "means they discontinue the prosecution." "In both situations, once your charges are withdrawn or stayed by the Crown, you don't have to go back to court," spokesperson Sujata Raisinghani wrote in an e-mail. [continues 219 words]
