Ontario Senator Tony Dean, sponsor of the Trudeau Liberals' pot bill in the Upper Chamber, is upset that Canadians will not be able to legally light up their spliffs until long after Canada Day. He says time is of the essence, and that the government does not have the luxury of biding it. Why is this? Why, after more than 100 years of marijuana being illegal, does the good senator think pushing back the smoke date by a few weeks is the wrong thing to do? [continues 296 words]
A NORTHERN Manitoba First Nation is building a permanent checkstop on the only highway into the community to combat the illegal drug and liquor trade. "It's like a border crossing and you'll have no choice but to go through it. And if you don't want to be searched, you're not going to go in," Norway House Chief Ron Evans said. The small building next to Highway 373 looks a bit like a transport safety weigh station. As of this month, the Norway House Cree Nation Safety and Security Checkpoint will be open 24/7. Its official opening is scheduled for Feb. 24. [continues 1309 words]
Harm reduction is more than a job for Karen Kittilsen Levine. Reducing the numbers of people dying from opioid addiction and blood-borne disease is something she's determined to do. "We began doing outreach in Pictou County on November 1 and have more than 40 clients, and we're beginning outreach in Amherst within a few days," said Kittilsen Levine, who is the harm reduction coordinator for the Northern Healthy Connections Society. The organization collects used needles and distributes clean ones. It also provides condoms and information on blood-borne diseases. [continues 226 words]
Every morning, Kevin Thompson takes a short stroll from his apartment to the Crosstown Clinic, where he signs in, gets his prescription medicine, then sits in a small room and injects it before heading off to work. He follows this routine up to three times a day and has done so virtually every day for more than a dozen years. The medicine is diacetylmorphine, the medical term for prescription heroin. "It saved my life. No question, it saved my life," Mr. Thompson, 47, says emphatically. [continues 683 words]
OTTAWA - Setting up tattoo parlours and needle-exchange programs in penitentiaries would help reduce the spread of hepatitis C, the federal prison service has told the Trudeau government. A Correctional Service memo obtained under the Access to Information Act advises Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale to round out existing and planned measures to fight hepatitis and HIV in prison. Prison tattooing and needle-exchange programs for drug users have generated intense controversy over the years, and the March 2017 memo says detailed research should be carried out before embarking on a syringe needle program, in particular, "to avoid unintended and negative consequences for inmates." [continues 459 words]
B.C. has become a haven of drug-dealing and money-laundering that's killing hundreds of people from overdoses and pricing homes beyond the reach of law-abiding citizens. That's the view of Attorney-General David Eby, who's promising bold action to purge B.C.'s casinos and hyper-inflated real-estate markets from the influence of criminals. "We have an international reputation that's in tatters," Eby told me. "We will clean it up. My goal is to have B.C.'s international reputation back on track." [continues 404 words]
Two years after the province abandoned using an Ontario laboratory for drug and alcohol testing in custody cases, a decision by a Sydney Supreme Court justice is casting doubt on whether a Halifax lab is any more reliable. The decision by Justice Theresa Forgeron of the court's Family Division rejected a bid by the Department of Community Services to have the director of the Capital Health Authority's toxicology lab, Dr. Bassam Nassar, give expert opinion evidence concerning urine testing samples from a Cape Breton father. [continues 486 words]
For all the hand-wringing that we were rushing into cannabis legalization, and that there wasn't enough time to get it right, it turns out that it wasn't that hard to figure out, after all. Proponents of legalization have long argued that it makes far more sense to regulate cannabis similar to how we regulate alcohol. All along, then, the model for cannabis retail was staring us right in the face, and the Alberta government deserves credit for not missing the glaringly obvious. [continues 584 words]
I am quite suspicious about the headspace of the Journal editor who captioned a brief article about a U.S. survey with the headline "Pot holiday linked to fatal car crashes" (Feb. 13). Maybe their attention span allowed them to only get as far as the first paragraph. The next one explicitly stated that the survey being reported had found absolutely no evidence of a link between pot smoking and car crashes on the one day of the year studied from 1992 to 2016, which was April 20, the day of the year adopted by activists to push for the decriminalization of cannabis. [continues 107 words]
Patients still struggling to get covered by insurance plans As Alberta moves forward on retail applications for recreational marijuana, those who use the drug for medical reasons still wait for coverage. Most forms of medical cannabis do not have a Drug Identification Number (DIN) in Canada, which leaves it subject to tax and exempts it from most health coverage plans. "We're not talking about drug users using this to get high, we're talking about patients that need it to be able to function and be part of a working society," said Scott Bladon, an Edmonton man who has legally used cannabis for three years to treat psoriatic arthritis. [continues 523 words]
As legalization looms, experts say we're not road safe yet As Canada readies to legalize pot this summer, experts including an ex-traffic cop warn we're still stumped about stopping stoned drivers from hitting B.C.'S streets. "I've stopped lots of people who have been under the influence of marijuana," recalls retired West Vancouver traffic enforcement officer Cpl. Grant Gottgetreu. "You had to get really good at making observations. "Unless a person gets pulled over and there's an overwhelming smell of burned marijuana from the car there's still no instrument out there to test like there is for alcohol yet." [continues 532 words]
(Re: New guideline recommends doctors avoid prescribing medical marijuana for most conditions, Feb. 15) The British have just issued the same guideline raising the question why there was not public education on the serious dangers to health before the Trudeau government fast-tracked legalizing marijuana. Besides causing serious damage to young developing brains, using pot can also lead to very aggressive behaviour is some people. The bottom line is very little is known about the long-term health effects of the 80 cannabinoids contained in marijuana. One thing we do know from the experiences in Colorado and Washington states, after legalization, is there will likely be more impaired drivers on our highways leading to more road deaths and young people will gain access to the drug with dire consequences. [continues 131 words]
Pallister government not budgeting for pot tax revenue this year If the Pallister government projects a reduced deficit in the 2018 provincial budget, it won't be because of a new pot tax. The Winnipeg Sun has learned that next month's budget will not include a revenue line from marijuana sales, even though legalized pot is expected to go on sale sometime later this year. Finance Minister Cameron Friesen confirmed government is not budgeting for any marijuana revenues in 2018-19 and is still examining the potential costs associated with legalized weed, including additional health care, road safety and justice costs. [continues 558 words]
I firmly believe that most Canadians don't want recreational marijuana legalized, and that there is still time to stop it. The basic threat to the Liberal party is anti-marijuana voters who will get their attention in the election coming up next year. I don't need to repeat the many solid reasons why legalization of pot is a bad decision by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It will turn into a disaster, causing major grief to thousands of families. It's sad that most Canadians don't speak up as loudly as the dopers do while breaking the law. What we need is a well-known "champion," like a Jim Pattison type, to start up a campaign against legalization. Bill Davis, New Westminster [end]
With toxic street drugs such as fentanyl killing four British Columbians a day, much of the response has focused on overdose treatments with naloxone, and supervised injection sites. Yet public-health staff have concluded that emergency interventions such as these will not stop the epidemic. If the supply of these drugs cannot be halted - and no war on drugs has ever been won - the only option is to prevent the downward slide that leads to street-drug addiction. Many of the victims are middle-age men and women who have fought a lifelong struggle against such challenges as alcoholism, mental illness, the lasting effects of childhood abuse and more. [continues 513 words]
The mayor is wrong on allowing legal pot cafes, and here's why Mayor Jim Watson won't support the idea of legal lounges where people can smoke pot. That's not even remotely surprising: Watson's a cautious, conservative mayor when it comes to social policy. He doesn't want to make it easier for anyone to smoke anything in lounges. If his view wins the day, there won't really be anywhere in Ottawa to smoke pot, because politicians at Queen's Park have banned smoking marijuana in public places. [continues 590 words]
Psychologists point to 'compelling evidence' of cannabis' potential health impairments Apart from the #Metoo maelstrom and the housing crises in Toronto and Vancouver, few things stir up Canadians more than marijuana, which its promoters claim is the cure for everything from glaucoma to brain disease =2E Should private outlets sell recreational marijuana? Is it more enjoyable to smoke or swallow cannabis? Will I get rich on pot stocks? Is it possible to remove the criminal underground from Canada's $6 billion-a-year cannabis industry? [continues 975 words]
Are public health officials facing up to the fact that the overdose epidemic in Canada and the U.S. is mostly devastating boys and men? There are small signs some health officials are slowly, awkwardly, hesitatingly beginning to acknowledge the obvious: The overdose crisis is predominantly an issue of men's health. Public officials have much denial to make up for. It was just a year ago that former B.C. Liberal health minister Terry Lake pulled out the public relations stops to open a 38-bed Vancouver facility for women to overcome substance abuse. Months before an election, Lake also announced an overdose prevention site exclusively for females. [continues 730 words]
Dealing with the impact of marijuana legalization is expected to be one of the year's biggest challenges for the Cornwall Community Police Service, according to Chief-designate Danny Aikman. "Obviously there is a lot of attention being paid the legalization of marijuana and the impact that will have on municipalities as well as police forces," he said. The Cornwall police are concerned their costs could increase because of the change in the law, and Aikman said just because possession will be legal, doesn't mean enforcement efforts can be stopped. [continues 509 words]
Inside Canada
