A marijuana dispensary owner has been charged with a range of offences after Broadview RCMP conducted two raids in Whitewood on Tuesday morning.

An RCMP brief said that marijuana and property, including cellphones, computers, cash and three vehicles, were all seized during raids on a business - not named by RCMP but known to be Martin Medical Services on the 600 block of 3rd Ave. in Whitewood - and a private residence.

Jerry Matthew Martin, 45, is charged with offences relating to the "operation of an unlawful marijuana dispensary," RCMP said.

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A new program has started up to help tackle the city's discarded needle problem.

In the realm of tongue-twisting health acronyms, CHANGE is one of the worst offenders.

It stands for Community, Harm Reduction, Needle Pickup, Guidance and Education, and it's the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region's newest strategy to reduce discarded needles in the community.

Formed late this September, the CHANGE team goes to "hotspots" for IV drug use, places where large numbers of discarded syringes tend to litter public places.

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In part four of our look at the major issues of the campaign, we asked the mayoral candidates about a new Victoria Hospital and the city's role in the battle against HIV

Healthcare is not a municipal responsibility. But, as Mayor Dionne puts it, the mayor can be a "voice for the residents of Prince Albert," calling on the province to provide the healthcare our city deserves.

Whoever becomes mayor will need to raise that voice.

Prince Albert has just lost its only publicly funded audiologist, and the lack of other specialists is forcing residents to travel to Saskatoon.

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A popular area of Northern Saskatchewan's lake country has the dubious distinction of leading Canada in one marijuana statistic.

A Postmedia study of Statistics Canada numbers from more than 1,000 cities, towns and RCMP jurisdictions revealed that the Waskesiu Lake region - which includes the resort town of Waskesiu, Prince Albert National Park, Montreal Lake Cree Nation and other small communities - had the highest per capita rate of marijuana possession charges in the country in 2015.

Randy Kershaw, a member of the Waskesiu town council, said the town itself did not see any visible increase in marijuana use during 2015, stressing that the statistics cover a wide area.

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Vintage Vinyl and Hemp Emporium is known for a lot of things, notably its history with marijuana.

Dylan and Janelle Baumet's father Pat opened Vintage Vinyl and Hemp Emporium 25 years ago in downtown Regina. The store has remained a family business over the years and sells everything from records to marijuana smoking accessories.

The store has continued to sell accessories for smoking marijuana and has seen society's thoughts toward marijuana change.

"Every year there's just more and more smokers and people are starting to realize that marijuana's good and not bad," Dylan said.

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A Saskatchewan First Nation seeking to keep its territory free of drug dealers and pedophiles is moving to pass a law allowing it to banish "undesirable people."

Chief Austin Bear of Muskoday First Nation said in an interview this week that the band council will conduct a referendum before the end of October asking members to approve a banishment law that he said will be the first of its kind in Canada.

Muskoday and other Canadian First Nations have in the past used band council resolutions to evict people from their communities, but Bear said such resolutions would not withstand a court challenge. Muskoday's law will fall under a partial self-government regime called the First Nations Land Management Act, which gives signatory bands the power to manage their own lands.

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How history repeats itself! Today, politicians are once again ignoring the pain of terminal cancer patients. At the same time they are shooting themselves in the foot by making illogical remarks about pain. This human folly takes me back 37 years.

In January 1979, I wrote a New Year's resolution in this column to petition the government to legalize medical heroin to ease the agony of terminal cancer patients. I knew that heroin had been used in English hospitals for 90 years, so why not have this painkiller available in North America? But rather than being applauded for my compassion, all hell broke loose.

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Kelly Csada opened a medical marijuana dispensary in Regina on Monday to help people like herself.

Since 1990, Csada has suffered from Crohn's disease. Over the years, she has had 18 feet of her small intestine removed, five bowel resections and been prescribed numerous potent medications, including fentanyl, OxyContin and morphine.

In researching alternatives to narcotics, she learned about Phoenix tears oil - a concentrated form of the cannabis plant.

"I couldn't find it and I had people offer to make it for me, but I said, 'No. I put so much medication into my body.' I wanted to make sure that what I was getting was clean and pure.' "

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Re: Four findings (SP Aug. 8):

Instead of printing American pot propaganda, how about the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix provide Canadians with the scientific truths about the use of pot and the consequences on reproductive health.

Risks demonstrated in the scientific literature pertaining to marijuana product use include generational genetic and chromosomal damage.

Marijuana use can disrupt fetal growth and the development of organs and limbs and may result in mutagenic alterations in DNA. Cannabis has also been associated with fetal abnormalities in many studies including low birth weight, fetal growth restriction, preterm birth spontaneous miscarriage, spina bifida and others.

Men who use marijuana are at risk for testicular cancer, sterility and erectile dysfunction if they smoke marijuana products.

Pamela McColl, Vancouver McColl writes on behalf of the Marijuana Victims' Association

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Crystal meth use in Prince Albert is "out of control" and the situation could worsen in the next year, says a police officer who heads the city's crystal meth intervention program.

"We're so far behind it, we just need to get some kind of a grip on it," said Prince Albert Police Sgt. Troy Dumont.

"I go through the calls every day and I see more of it, more just basic calls when meth is kind of involved .... People are acting different, you can just tell. It is on the rise and we need to do something about it."

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Saskatoon's police chief says police forces across the country are charging fewer and fewer people with marijuana possession as legalization of recreational use looms.

"Police right across Canada, I think, started to back off on the charges for minor possession," Chief Clive Weighill said earlier this week.

After a spike in possession charges in 2013, Saskatoon has seen a steady decline in the number of people charged with possession: the number dropped by 27 per cent between 2013 and 2014, then by 10 per cent from 2014 to 2015, according to Statistics Canada data. This year, however, pot possession charges have remained nearly the same as last year. As of this week, slightly more than 190 people have been charged so far in 2016, according to data from city police.

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Addictive Drug Partially to Blame for Increase, Says Police Chief

An influx of crystal meth in Saskatoon is helping fuel the city's crime problem, according to police chief Clive Weighill.

"It's driving a lot of our property crime, our break and enters our thefts," he said.

Saskatoon again has the worst crime rate in the country and Weighill said the deadly and highly addictive drug is partially to blame.

Last year, Saskatoon police laid 108 charges for crystal meth possession - double the 54 laid in 2014 and the 22 laid in 2013.

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My nieces and nephews are getting to the age where kids experiment with drugs and it's scary. How do you discourage them when movies and TV make it all look so interesting and fun? Damn you to hell, Seth Rogen!

I am especially at a loss because I've never understood drugs in the first place. I was not a drug user for a few reasons, the first being absolute fear. My mom did a great job of cobbling together every terrible drug story she'd ever heard and regaling us with them as we ate our beans and wieners at the dinner table: "This boy, he did 'The Pot' one time and he got real high and then he put the cat in the oven cuz he thought it was a turkey." Such stories made me fearful both of drugs and of wieners.

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My nieces and nephews are getting to the age where kids experiment with drugs and it's scary. How do you discourage them when movies and TV make it all look so interesting and fun? Damn you to hell, Seth Rogen!

I am especially at a loss because I've never understood drugs in the first place. I was not a drug user for a few reasons - the first of which was absolute fear. My mom did a great job of cobbling together every terrible drug story she'd ever heard and regaling us with them as we ate our beans and wieners at the dinner table: "This boy, he did 'The Pot' one time and he got real high and then he put the cat in the oven cuz he thought it was a turkey." Such stories made me fearful both of drugs and of wieners.

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Group to consult with provincial, municipal leaders about regulations

A Saskatchewan law professor will be one of the people deciding how pot will become legalized in Canada.

The federal government is launching a task force to study the legalization and regulation of marijuana, after committing to introduce legislation on the legalization of pot in the spring of 2017.

University of Saskatchewan law professor Barbara von Tigerstrom is among the people the government has tapped to help guide that process.

"It's a daunting challenge but a really important one," von Tigerstrom said after the task force was unveiled.

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No jail time for former Huskie Neary after 21 pounds of marijuana seized

Former University of Saskatchewan football linebacker Seamus John Neary gave an audible sigh of relief when Queen's Bench Justice Shawn Smith sentenced him to two years of probation, but no jail time.

Neary, 25, was convicted in November of trafficking marijuana and possessing the proceeds of crime, after 21 pounds of marijuana and $1,000 in cash were seized during an investigation in February 2014.

Smith noted the Court of Appeal has ruled sentences of 15 to 18 months in jail are appropriate for marijuana trafficking involving amounts similar to Neary's case, but said the fact Canada is in a transition period with the federal government promising to legalize marijuana was a factor in his ruling.

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Trauma is at the nature of addiction, according to Dr. Gabor Mate.

"Addiction is only a symptom, it's not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is trauma," said Mate.

Mate was in Regina on Wednesday to speak at the sixth International Training Symposium on Innovative Approaches to Justice: Where Justice and Treatment Meet.

The conference started Tuesday and runs until Friday at the Hotel Saskatchewan. Judges, lawyers, counsellors and professionals who work in treatment courts from across the country are in attendance, along with a handful of people from the United States. The conference is held every two years, with the last one being held in Vancouver.

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How could this medical and social disaster ever be allowed to happen? If authorities had told me that Ontario, just one Canadian province, was treating 400 addicts in methadone clinics, I'd believe them. But, the actual number is 42,000. But how many of these addicts need methadone? And what is the solution for this madness?

Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, is not an arm-chair commentator on addiction. Rather, he's an internationally renowned expert, a British psychiatrist, and prison doctor who has treated thousands of addicts over years.

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Marijuana, by most measures, is not the scourge that alcohol is, writes

National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that "about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn't impair them."

The article - When is stoned too stoned? - further sensationalized the "crisis" by noting: "nothing would make (20 per cent of those surveyed) stop driving while stoned."

With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neo-cons into paroxysms of paranoia, fearing our roads would be turned into killing fields by the demon weed.

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Marijuana, by most measures, is not the scourge that alcohol is, writes David Booth.

The National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that "about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn't impair them."

The article - When is stoned too stoned? - further sensationalized the "crisis" by noting: "nothing would make (20 per cent of those surveyed) stop driving while stoned."

With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neo-cons into paroxysms of paranoia, fearing our roads would be turned into killing fields by the demon weed.

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