Pamela McColl is guilty of some backwards thinking. Eight decades of cannabis (marijuana) prohibition has proven to be "experimenting with dangerous drug policies" and "risky public-health policy," not the other way around.

Insinuating cannabis laws involve "evidence-based drug policy" could not be farther from the truth. Cannabis prohibition and persecution was orchestrated from the beginning out of greed and racism. If cannabis were discovered today for the first time, it would be hailed as a miracle plant.

Stan White

Dillon, CO

[end]

If marijuana is legalized in this province, nearly one-quarter of Manitoba adults say they're prepared to get some. Rich or poor, NDP or Progressive Conservative, man or woman, young or middle-aged - tens of thousands are likely to try some pot.

The Winnipeg Free Press/Probe Research Inc. survey asked, "If marijuana becomes legal in Canada, how likely would you be to use it even just once?" Twenty-four per cent - nearly one-quarter of a million adult Manitobans - said they would be likely to use it.

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"I have been hearing and reading a lot about fentanyl and about the many hundreds who have died using it, Well, I guess I want to kill myself, so would the government please advise me were I can get a couple pills? Oh, and by the way, would they send along the location of any of the injection sites where I can get the antidote just in case I change my mind?

The question remains: Why is the government supporting this sort of crap by offering injection sites and free antidotes to people who know full well taking the drug may kill them, but they do it anyway? Maybe it's the government who needs the antidote.

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WINNIPEG School Division is considering stocking its schools with the antidote naloxone in case any student suffers an opioid overdose.

"We need to pay attention to it," trustee Lisa Naylor said Thursday. "It may be something we deem as a good idea, as part of a first aid kit."

Naylor raised the possibility at a school board meeting earlier this month and was told the WSD administration was already looking into it. Naylor said a parent, who is also a doctor, had told her another unidentified school division is also considering putting naloxone kits in schools.

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Re: How Canada's legalization of marijuana could change its relations with the U.S. (Dec. 20)

Donald Trump is the least of Prime Minister Trudeau's worries.

Three international UN drug conventions represent the legal basis of global drug prohibition, restricting nation-states from taking alternative approaches, including moving to the legalization of marijuana products for a domestic market.

The prime minister cannot pick and choose what international laws he wishes to uphold.

Not only will the new Trump administration in the United States question Trudeau's enthusiasm for risky public-health policy, but Canada will find itself offside of 190 countries that have supported evidence-based drug policy for decades. Canada has the highest rate of use by youth in the industrialized world and is the last country that should be experimenting with dangerous drug policies.

Pamela McColl

Vancouver

[end]

For the past few days I have been listening to, and reading about the 80 recommendations made by the marijuana legalization task force, headed up by Anne McMillan, a former Liberal justice minister.

Some of the recommendations include: an age for purchase restriction of not less than 18 (not 21 as recommended by the Canadian Medical Association); separate storefronts for tobacco, alcohol and pot because, according to the committee, one addiction leads to another; two separate bureaucracies for medical and recreational use; and money is to be earmarked to fight addiction, underage use and for harm-reduction strategies.

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OTTAWA - It seems pretty clear Canada is going to fully legalize small amounts of marijuana for recreational use in just a matter of months.

The marijuana task force reported its findings publicly this week, recommending recreational use be legalized with certain limitations, including how much can be grown or possessed at a time and where it can be sold. Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said Tuesday plans are in place to introduce legislation for legalization in spring 2017.

There is no indication the government is going to put the train back in the station on this one.

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A federal task force report on legalized recreational marijuana marks a "momentous" step toward the normalization of the drug, a local pot advocate said Tuesday.

"I think the consensus is this is the day a lot of people, both from the medical cannabis community and recreational users, never thought they would live to see," said Steven Stairs, a medical marijuana user and local "4/20" organizer.

The task force is recommending storefront and mail-order sales to Canadians 18 years and older, with personal growing limits of four plants per person.

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Re: 'Feds should delay legalizing pot,' Dec. 6.

I'm sure Premier Brian Pallister means well. However, cannabis (marijuana) usage and sales are not going to wait for delays. Pallister's message then must be acknowledged as informing consumers to continue purchasing cannabis from the black market while government takes additional time to create a regulated legal market to replace it.

And that's perfectly fine; North Americans have grown accustomed to the increased efficiency of the black market for the last eight decades.

Dillon, Colorado

(An intense education campaign is needed for when pot is legalized.)

[end]

Pallister says he is not alone in wanting delay in feds' marijuana bill

The federal government should postpone legislation to legalize marijuana, planned for the spring, because there are still too many details to work out, says Premier Brian Pallister.

"We've done a fair bit of preparatory work here and research, and the more we do, the more we unlock complexities that need to be addressed that are not minor things," Pallister told reporters Tuesday.

"I know at least some of the other first ministers have these concerns as well."

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Parents need to realize addiction knows no demographic boundaries

THERE are many ways a parent can lose a child to drugs. They might overdose and die. They might get lost to addiction, which is a kind of death. Or they might be killed by drug-related violence - such as Cooper Nemeth, whose body was found in a recycling bin in February, or TJ Wiebe, who was beaten, strangled and left to die in a field in 2003.

In February, I sat in Karen Wiebe's living room. We talked about TJ, and what the Nemeth family was going through, trying to grieve while also dealing with the justice system and the media. No one prepares you for what happens when your child becomes a headline.

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There is no question that the recreational use of marijuana is coming, even though it will open the door to a number of serious health issues down the road. The Canadian Pediatric Society is advocating an age restriction for its use along the lines of what is in place for alcohol. Give me a break - if they think that younger people will adhere to the age limit they are pipe dreaming. Like booze, the younger set will just pay someone to purchase it for them. This pending legislation will open up a Pandora's Box of problems but the feds can't say the [sic] haven't been warned.

Stephen Flanagan



(Fair point.)

[end]

Firefighter union reacts to Winnipeg's overdose statistics

Winnipeg firefighters and paramedics are responding to more overdose calls in 2016 than in the past five years, new data shows.

From Jan. 1 to Nov.16, the city says the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service has received 1,593 calls related to overdoses and poisonings, which are tracked together.

In 2015, the service had 1,556 of the same calls, compared to 1,328 back in 2014 and 1,269 in 2013.

Municipal spokesperson Michelle Finley said the service only tracks the calls and does not specify which drug causes an overdose.

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MANITOBA - Premier Brian Pallister said the federal government should delay introducing legislation to legalize marijuana until the provinces are prepared to deal with its legal and social implications, particularly drug-impaired driving.

Pallister heads to Ottawa Friday for a first ministers meeting between premiers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau called the meeting to discuss his climate change plan, and requirement for every province to introduce a price on carbon, and the premiers are hoping to put pressure on Trudeau over health-care transfers.

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TODAY marks World AIDS Day. We celebrate advances made in the fight against HIV, look back on how far we've come and honour those we've lost, while also looking to the future and what we have left to accomplish.

Last year, 102 people in Manitoba were diagnosed with HIV, joining more than 1,250 living with HIV in the province and 78,000 across Canada.

Late diagnosis and limited access to services outside Winnipeg continue to be challenges, but there are success stories. For example, Manitoba has a relatively low rate of HIV among people who use drugs. In 2014, 12 per cent of new HIV diagnoses in Manitoba could be traced back to drug use, generally from sharing needles. The same year, the number in Saskatchewan was 49 per cent.

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Opioid crisis draws attention to supervised drug-use sites, but Manitoba's not interested - so far

A DECADE ago, fentanyl, the killer synthetic opioid that can be 100 times more potent than morphine, was a relatively unknown drug. Today, it's everywhere - and it's at the heart of a national crisis claiming the lives of hundreds of Canadians.

In Manitoba, at least two dozen people have died from opioid overdoses in 2016, nine confirmed to be caused by or related to fentanyl. It's a dangerous drug that many people don't even know they're taking: it's often showing up in other illicit drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

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Opioid conference misses point, advocate says

A policy to address the latest opioids crisis at a Health Canada conference in Ottawa does not go far enough, or fast enough, to prevent future deaths, an advocate says.

Cynthia Genaille, whose daughter Brittany died of a fentanyl overdose on Oct. 6, speaks to media during a small rally denouncing the opioid in front of the Legislative Building.

"Where's the urgency?" Richard Elliott, the executive director for the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, asked. "You need to stop people from dying now."

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National poll finds 65% of Manitobans fear spike in impaired driving once pot becomes legal

If you're afraid drugged driving will become more common once marijuana is legalized, you are certainly not alone.

CAA Manitoba reports found 65% of Manitobans surveyed in a national poll believe there will be an increase in impaired driving once recreational marijuana use is legal. Meanwhile, 24% say they've driven while under the influence of marijuana or been the passenger of someone who has.

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Calls for national strategy heading into summit on illicit drugs

MANITOBA'S health minister is calling on the federal government to stop the flow of powdered fentanyl from countries such as China.

"We need national strategies around that," Kelvin Goertzen said Monday at a news conference to mark addictions awareness week.

The event, held before Friday's national opioid conference and summit in Ottawa, included some of the province's leading addictions and health officials and the mothers of two victims of fentanyl overdoses.

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Trafficking teen gets off with reprimand

A Winnipeg teen convicted of possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking got off with a reprimand - the lightest sanction available under the Youth Criminal Justice Act - after a judge ruled police violated his rights after his arrest.

Police arrested the then 17-year-old accused after a safety and security officer at his high school reported suspicions he had been selling marijuana to other students from his car. Police conducted a traffic stop and found 36 grams of packaged marijuana in a gym bag behind the driver seat.

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