B.C. police engaged in a "serious misuse of their powers" when they extended an investigation of a suspected medical marijuana theft to search the home for signs of criminal activity, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled. Justice Brian Joyce said the Abbotsford police were justified in searching the home after suspecting a violent grow rip had occurred on Feb. 10, 2009, but they exceeded their limits in obtaining a search warrant after a "rough count" of the medical marijuana plants inside indicated the grower was in violation of his licence. [continues 254 words]
Abbotsford police engaged in a "serious misuse of their powers" when they extended an investigation of a suspected medical marijuana grow rip to search the home for signs of criminal activity, a Supreme Court judge has ruled. Justice Brian Joyce said the police were justified in searching the home after suspecting a violent grow rip had occurred on Feb. 10, 2009, but they exceeded their limits in obtaining a search warrant after a "rough count" of the medical marijuana plants inside indicated the grower was in violation of his licence. [continues 538 words]
Re: Changes in works for marijuana laws (SP, Dec. 10). I find the proposed changes to regulations extremely annoying. Eliminating the designated grower program in favour of commercial marijuana is cruel and unnecessary. Consider MS sufferer Michael Greenblatt, as discussed in the article. He was desperate for relief after 20 years of taking toxic pharmaceuticals that were becoming less effective at controlling his spasms and nausea. What a miracle that marijuana helps him, and how wonderful that his son can grow it for him. [continues 187 words]
Re: Medical marijuana series, The Journal, Dec. 10 to 12, and "Marijuana as medicine a complex issue," Opinion, Dec. 14. Congratulations to Sharon Kirkey and Jodie Sinnema for excellent coverage on medical marijuana. Congratulations to The Journal for the editorial, which did not criminalize patients using medical marijuana, and welcome to the tragic politics of chronic pain in Canada. On one side we have people with bodies crushed by car accidents or destroyed by illness or military devices; they use medical marijuana as a last resource because synthetic marijuana (THC) helps them. [continues 160 words]
Dear Editor: Regarding Dan Albas MP REPORT: Lack of info quickly turns to misinformation of Dec. 8, 2011. What seems to be misunderstood by the Member of Parliament is that Clause 39 - 41 of Bill C-10, in effect, amounts to the providing of insulation for organized crime and drug kingpins. This consequence would, for the most part, be triggered by the enactment of the proposed changes to the medical marihuana program by Health Canada. The amendment to clause 41, the last of the Part 2 amendments in reference to Schedule II inclusions of Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, alone ensures that. (Mandatory minimum penalty would only apply to instances where more than five plants but fewer than 201 plants are produced for the purpose of trafficking and where any of the specified aggravating factors would apply.) [continues 164 words]
Re: 'More study needed on effects of marijuana' (Daily News, Dec. 14) Madeline Bruce may be interested in one statistic regarding the God-given plant cannabis (marijuana). In over 5,000 years of documented medical use there hasn't been one single death directly related to cannabis use. That's safety on a Biblical scale. Truthfully, Stan White Dillon, Colo. [end]
Re: We Can't Afford A War On Weed, Larry Campbell, Philip Owen and Sam Sullivan, Dec. 19. If these three ex-mayors of Vancouver told me that at midnight it was dark outside, I would still look out the window to check. But in this case, when talking about the futility of the war on weed, they are bang on. This war, run simultaneously in the United States and Canada, has been a failure of colossal proportions. Let's stop the madness and fill the government's empty piggy bank instead of the criminals' pockets. Stanley Levy Surrey, B.C. [end]
Re: We Can't Afford A War On Weed, Larry Campbell, Philip Owen and Sam Sullivan, Dec. 19. Hurrah for the clarion call by three former Vancouver mayors for an end to marijuana prohibition. Legalize pot and - presto - gang-related violent crime and fear among our citizens would disappear. But wait, that's not all. In their enthusiasm, they missed the collateral benefit of having solved Canada's problem of declining tourism from south of the border and elsewhere. Just think of the tourism potential of a mass influx of drug-deprived folks descending on the "True North, Strong and Free and Legally Drugged," pouring untold millions of much-needed dollars into our struggling economy ... with many undoubtedly wishing to stay permanently. [continues 110 words]
Re: We Can't Afford A War On Weed, Larry Campbell, Philip Owen and Sam Sullivan, Dec. 19. The former mayors of Vancouver advocating for decriminalizing the gateway drug cannabis is ludicrous. It was largely because of their permissiveness and leniency that Vancouver's Downtown Eastside turned into the nightmare that it is today. Continuing down this path would be asinine. Seattle, a city comparable in weather and socio-economic climate, does not have the same problem with open drug use simply because it is not tolerated. New York cleaned up its decaying core in the 1980s by cracking down on drug use, not by some hare-brained scheme of decriminalization. The constant reference to "the war on drugs" is also getting tiresome. The struggle to keep drugs off the streets is more like a constant battle, similar to those society wages with any other illegal, undesirable activity. Jeffrey Hay Ladner B.C. [end]
Re: We Can't Afford A War On Weed, Larry Campbell, Philip Owen and Sam Sullivan, Dec. 19. If the war on drugs has been such a costly failure and the negative consequences of prohibition so evident why stop at pot? We should be decriminalizing all drugs. It's time for the former Vancouver mayors and everyone else to recognize that this shouldn't be about giving the government another commodity (marijuana) to tightly control under a "strict public health framework" with sin taxes and regulation. [continues 52 words]
There might be Canadians who, because of chronic pain or some other reason, find that a glass of wine or a shot of whiskey before bed helps them sleep, with less extreme side effects than other drugs. Those Canadians can have that glass before bed, and nobody asks them to fill out any paperwork or ask permission. Because that would be ridiculous. As ridiculous as Canada's medical marijuana system, which attempts to formalize and regulate an illegal substance. As data obtained by the Citizen show, there's been a spike in the number of people applying to use the drug because of arthritis. Many of those people might have other conditions, but the application process for arthritis is relatively streamlined. [continues 200 words]
Toronto police say officers lawfully searched and seized items from a Connaught Avenue South apartment in Hamilton during a countrywide anti-gangs sweep, but the tenant maintains she doesn't know why police broke down her door. "Officers did execute a search warrant (at this address)," Toronto police spokesperson Constable Tony Vella said Monday. "Officers did seize items from the apartment ... There was evidence of drug use from the apartment." But Vella said he could not elaborate on what items police took because the matter was before the courts. [continues 351 words]
With the government's omnibus crime bill set to become law, a critical question we should ask is whether we are becoming a society that fosters hope or one that extinguishes it. While Canada is a country of promise in many ways, the government's course of enacting legislation that favours incarceration and punishment over treatment and rehabilitation stands in conflict to the values that make it such a formidable nation. Coverage of the debate surrounding this bill has erroneously pitted conservatives against seemingly everyone else. But the divisions are not that simple. Although the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper espouses many of the values that conservatives uphold, there remain policies that cause significant moral and philosophical cleavages within the party. I am a Tory, but like many others who cast their ballot the same way I did not vote for the draconian and misguided measures in this regressive legislation. [continues 751 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]
After busting down the door of a Hamilton apartment and frightening the 68-year-old woman inside, Toronto police are admitting they had the wrong address in a botched raid last week. Whether they read the document wrong or had the wrong unit number to begin with, Const. Tony Vella could not say, they quickly realized their mistake; the warrant was meant for the unit next door. "It was the incorrect address. It was supposed to be the neighbour's address," Vella said Sunday. [continues 358 words]
The Harper government will protect marijuana trafficking. Such was the effect of the Prime Minister's response to leading public officials in British Columbia who declared support for decriminalization, regulation and even taxation of the marijuana industry. The Conservative Party government will not only protect marijuana traffickers whose profits derive from the risk of criminal sanctions, it will bolster trade in illegal weapons used to protect or else 'take out' marijuana industry competitors. Continued criminal sanctions are presently being beefed up to the increase of the Criminal Justice Industry with its complement of police, courts, lawyers and, of course, jails. This bourgeoning industry is funded with our taxes. [continues 133 words]
Canada has reached a critical time in its misguided War on Weed. Despite investing countless billions across North America in areas such as law enforcement, prison expansion and border controls, marijuana prohibition has been a costly failure. Youth today have easier access to pot than alcohol and tobacco, organized crime is getting rich and some neighbourhoods remain deadly combat zones as arrests lead to new rounds of turf warfare among gangs controlling the marijuana trade. [continues 791 words]
Inside Canada
