Re: Lots of buzz over first pot licences, July 8 (and related stories)

Now that neighbouring Washington state and Colorado have legalized marijuana, Ottawa can no longer claim Canada must maintain marijuana prohibition to maintain good U.S. relations. The Canadian Senate in 2002 offered a common-sense alternative to marijuana prohibition when the special committee on illegal drugs concluded marijuana is relatively benign, prohibition contributes to organized crime, and law enforcement efforts have little impact on patterns of use.

Consider the experience of the former land of the free and current world leader in per capita incarceration. The U.S. has almost double the rate of marijuana use as the Netherlands, where marijuana has been legally available for decades. The only winners in the war on marijuana are drug cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs politicians who deliberately confuse the drug war's tremendous collateral damage with a comparatively harmless plant.

Policy analyst, Common Sense for Drug Policy

[end]

Pot dispensaries sell to recreational users

Re: Easy to get, easy to buy, Special Report, July 19

Thank you for Mike Hager's expose of Vancouver's unregulated marijuana dispensaries.

We noticed a new Weeks store is opening at Broadway and Collingwood, a few blocks from Bayview Elementary.

Despite their colleges prohibiting the practice, naturopaths and psychologists are prescribing marijuana because they can make a profit. It is impossible the more than 30 dispensaries in Vancouver exist only to treat the needs only of chronic pain patients. These dispensaries are selling marijuana to people who use it recreationally. People who want to use marijuana are able, as Mike Hager proves, to obtain it easily. Expecting unlicensed, for-profit and unregulated businesses to screen their customers is laughable.

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Briere Says He'll Continue to Sell Small Amounts - Medical Note or Not - Until His Hand Is Forced

The cannabis crusader behind Vancouver's largest and laxest chain of dispensaries says he will continue selling small amounts of pot to customers - even if they can't prove they need it for medicinal purposes - until the drug is legalized or he is again charged with trafficking.

Don Briere says his eight-store Weeds Glass and Gifts chain will continue its practice of selling under a gram of combustible or edible cannabis to those without a federal medicinal licence or a note from a naturopath or doctor. The colourful 63- year-old entrepreneur says public opinion has shifted further in his favour from 2004 when his Da Kine Smoke and Beverage Shop was surrounded by the VPD's emergency response team and he was charged with trafficking for selling recreational pot over the counter.

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Society Has Learned to Tolerate Things It Once Condemned

British Columbia's social conservatives shouldn't light their hair on fire because of the experiment with retail sales for recreational marijuana now taking place among our neighbours in Washington state. Likewise, libertarian pot enthusiasts would be wise to delay any joyous dancing in the streets, for there is still there, here is still here and today is not yet tomorrow.

Times change and notions of morality evolve, but here in Canada we're still trying to figure out how to effectively manage medicinal marijuana, let alone deal with smoking pot for fun - not that there aren't a lot of fun seekers. Sales statistics suggest that medicinal marijuana may have much in common with its bootleg era predecessor, medicinal brandy.

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The dedication of The Province to the legalization of marijuana could be very suspicious.

How can anyone in his right mind promote something that makes people mentally unstable? Who would like to deal with such people on a daily basis, in all kinds of situations, in all kinds of work and public places?

Bozenna Siedlecka, Port Moody

[end]

Our Reporter Had No Trouble Getting the Medical Green Light Required by Vancouver Marijuana Dispensaries

Recreational marijuana may as well be legal in the city of Vancouver given how easy it is for an adult to buy from a fast-growing number of dispensaries openly selling cannabis to customers.

In 2010, there were five dispensaries in the city, according to police. In January last year, police counted a dozen. Most were concentrated in the city's Downtown Eastside or along Kingsway.

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A few weeks ago I wrote about the eternal issue of kids and booze. Now it's time to talk about adults and pot.

I am always amazed by the number of people who, at some social occasion, will puff on a joint with the caveat that their spouse doesn't know. These people either have partners without a sense of smell or they are deluding themselves.

A lot of people seem to assume that smoking pot is some kind of rite of passage - a teenage folly that is put to rest sometime between post-secondary graduation and signing your first mortgage. Smoking marijuana is perceived as somehow not quite adult. Well I have news for you: there are a lot of old people who dig it and a lot more that need it. I'm one of them - I both need it and dig it.

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What do we make of products that are legal to sell but not to buy? Or the reverse: legal to buy but not to sell. If you can sell it, why can't you buy it? And vice versa? An economist, trained to think that both parties to any transaction gain, is mystified.

As you probably guessed, we're talking sex and drugs. By far the strangest fact about Canada's prostitution laws is that selling your body for sex, or at least renting it, has seldom been illegal. What has been illegal is indicating you're willing to rent, renting in certain places, or, as proposed in the Conservatives' latest attempt to solve the world's oldest labour-practices debate, being the renter. Why not cut through the hypocrisy and just outlaw prostitution, plain and simple?

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What is wrong with our society? How can parents keep their children in line and off drugs when the police and the media are putting out the impression that it is OK to use and sell drugs on Canada Day. Correct me if I am wrong!

I was watching the news on Canada Day and right in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery there was the sale of illegal drugs. It said that they were selling marijuana and hash brownies on the street and police were just watching.

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Re: "Vancouver needs help to end homelessness", July 9

Mayor Gregor Robertson's goal to end homelessness will never be achieved. Homelessness is a symptom of the problem of drug addiction. Stop enabling drug addicts in the DTES. Stop wasting taxpayer money. Then, provide quality shelter and support in drug-free housing throughout Vancouver. Start to encourage and reward personal responsibility. And stop wasting taxpayer money.

Ron Hutchison

Vancouver

[end]

Will create a new line of pot-infused food and drinks for U.S. market

A Maple Ridge marijuana company is going public with an injection of cash from a venture capitalist.

Remo Cannabrands' half-million dollar partnership with Gold Finder Explorations will see it expand from a home-based business to 10,000-sq.-ft. warehouse.

Remo Colasanti is the brain behind Remo Cannabrands, which sells nutrients to legal marijuana producers but has plans to create a new line of marijuana-infused edibles, beverages and tinctures.

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Thank you for your editorial on Thursday!

Reasoned, articulate opinions in the mainstream media will, hopefully, encourage change in the archaic practice of turning marijuana users into criminals.

The ridiculousness of this ongoing exercise in futility, the criminalization of pot, is becoming obvious to all but the most head-in-in-sand individuals.

Barbara Ewart, Maple Ridge

[end]

Drug users shouldn't be given clean needles. It only encourages them, you see.

It's that kind of misguided, short-sighted thinking that leads to bans on needle exchanges and other harm reduction measures in communities.

Abbotsford went down that ill-advised road in 2005. In 2010, the Fraser Health Authority (FHA) urged the city to reconsider, citing among its concerns Abbotsford's hepatitis C infection rate, which was higher than regional, provincial and national averages. Earlier this year, Abbotsford council did the right thing and rescinded the bylaw.

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Washington state's legal marijuana rollout is showing the world how pot legalization can be done.

If and when legal marijuana comes to this side of the border, B.C. can learn from Washington's experience.

Not that the first week of legal weed has gone entirely smoothly in the Evergreen State. After one day, shortages have already been reported.

The Washington system takes almost all the back-alley and criminal nature out of the marijuana growing and selling business. It was striking watching how above-board and respectable the business became overnight.

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Why is it that the marijuana elite has been able to so effectively infiltrate the media, nowhere more apparent than with The Province's editorial Thursday on cannabis?

Ninety-one per cent of Canadians do not use marijuana and they must be concerned about the high rates of use by youth and the consequences of pot use before brain maturation at age 26. Why the reporting of the scientific findings are lagging the pot lobby's propaganda is the real story you need to be writing about.

To promote the idea that pot is relatively safe is beyond irresponsible.

With Canada leading the western world in kids using marijuana, every effort should be made to reduce acceptance of this drug.

Pamela McColl, Vancouver

[end]

A needle exchange ban may be lifted in Mission. - Record file photo

Needle exchange facilities in Mission have been operating for years despite a district bylaw prohibiting the activity. Now, Mission council is considering lifting the five-year-old ban in order to support harm-reduction strategies and protect the community's vulnerable drug users.

Drug overdose rates in Mission are two times higher than the provincial average, according to statistics from Fraser Health, and the medical health officer for the Fraser East region hopes to reach out and help more people by increasing needle exchange services.

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THE VANCOUVER POLICE Department wants you to know that it is not cracking down on marijuana.

Chief Const. Jim Chu made a notable point of stressing that message in the VPD's annual report for 2013.

"One statistic that may surprise you is the increase in cannabis incidents," Chu states there. "That number has jumped from 864 in 2012 to 1,048 last year. This does not reflect a hardening of the VPD drug policy. Our policy is and remains one that focuses on violent drug dealers who prey on marginalized and vulnerable people."

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Vice-president of Tilray in Nanaimo challenges the idea in paper at symposium

A medical study of Canadian cancer patients challenges the claim that marijuana is a so-called "gateway drug," says a Nanaimo man who was involved in the research.

Phillippe Lucas returned last week from the annual symposium of the International Cannabinoid Research Society conference, where he presented the as-yet unpublished research paper.

Lucas, who is the Tilray vice-president of patient research and services, has a doctorate from the University of Victoria and is a graduate researcher with the Centre for Addiction Research B.C.

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So let's get this straight. You can now legally purchase and consume recreational marijuana in Washington State but you better not be caught smoking it at Mount Baker or on other federal land in the state or you might get arrested.

And while it's, like, totally chill for Canadians to visit Washington State to buy and smoke its hugely taxed pot, for goodness sake don't mention that as your plan to a U.S. border guard. They are federal agents and they will likely deny you entry and enter your name on the U.S. watch list that could make it very difficult to enter the U.S. in the future.

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TODAY (JULY 9) is the official end of Marc Emery's five-year sentence for selling marijuana seeds to customers in the U.S.

To mark the occasion, a "smoky celebration" is planned for 4 p.m. at Cannabis Culture Headquarters at 307 West Hastings Street.

However, Vancouver's Prince of Pot isn't actually scheduled for release until tomorrow (July 10), at which point he will be transferred from Yazoo City Prison in Mississippi into the custody of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. (Yazoo doesn't release inmates on Wednesdays.)

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