SKOPJE, North Macedonia - In a desolate industrial zone of this capital city, a cannabis grow house is under construction that, when finished, will span 178,000 square feet, about the size of a Walmart superstore. At full capacity, 17 tons of marijuana a year, worth about $50 million, will be harvested. Among the planned offerings is an American strain known as Herijuana, a portmanteau of "heroin" and "marijuana," which has received some rhapsodic online reviews. "I feel blown to the dome omg," wrote a fan on Leafly, a cannabis review site. "It also gave me the ability to rap." [continues 1639 words]
The soldiers took them in the night. First they came for Nitza Alvarado Espinoza and Jose Alvarado Herrera. The 31-year-old cousins were sitting in a van outside a family member's house when troops forced them into a military truck. Minutes later, soldiers arrived at the house of another Alvarado cousin, 18-year-old Rocio Alvarado Reyes. She was carried away screaming at gunpoint in front of her young brothers and baby daughter. It was Dec. 29, 2009 -- the last time the cousins were seen alive. [continues 1279 words]
Millions of criminals are Canadians buying pot from Canadians, writes Jeremy Kemeny Everyone smoking recreational marijuana right now is a criminal. That is according to Canadian law and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who - planning to legalize this summer - has encouraged authorities to enforce these rules. There are a lot of criminals. In 2016, an estimated 4.9 million Canadians between the ages of 15 and 64 years old spent money on pot, which translates into $5.7 billion according to a new Statistics Canada report. And 94 per cent of that, the agency said, was consumed illegally. Your child, sibling or parent might be guilty. You probably have a cousin that's guilty. Some of your friends are likely guilty. That's millions Canadians guilty of possession of cannabis. [continues 662 words]
Senator Tony Dean is quarterbacking the challenging, complicated marijuana bill come Jan. 31, 2018, when his fellow Senators get back to their posts. But he has already armed his colleagues for informed debate amongst the 38 fellow Independent senators, 34 Tories and 15 Liberals. "It's not a cold start, we've heard from some 100 witnesses at parliamentary committees about the nature of cannabis," said Dean in an interview this week. "I don't believe the status quo (prohibition) is viable," said Dean, 64, a senator since Nov. 2016. [continues 202 words]
Chief's comments come after confirmation that constable died from fentanyl overdose Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders says he's actively looking at drug testing for officers in the wake of a constable's fentanyl overdose death this year. "I don't want to lose any officers to anything, especially drugs of any kind and if there are things that we can do to reduce that, then I'm very interested in that," Saunders said Tuesday during a year-end interview. [continues 462 words]
Laziness, not criminal intent, was likely behind a city police officer's decision to take home seized drugs, a judge ruled Tuesday. Provincial court Judge Jerry LeGrandeur said he had a reasonable doubt Const. Robert Cumming took home marijuana handed over to him by an undercover officer for his own personal use. LeGrandeur said Cumming's conduct in placing the contraband in his garbage bin in the alley behind his house before retrieving it hours later supported the suspended officer's story. [continues 466 words]
Ahead of recreational cannabis use becoming lawful, some observers see parallels with the end of prohibition The third in a series on the impending legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada. A notorious 1922 police shooting in southwestern Alberta, and the sensational trial that followed, caused many people to wonder whether enforcing alcohol prohibition was worth the trouble. Alberta's move to outlaw drinking in 1916 was wildly unpopular in the Crowsnest Pass, a cluster of coal mining towns nestled in the Rocky Mountains, near the B.C. boundary. [continues 699 words]
North Shore residents should be able to buy marijuana in either private or government-run outlets, similar to liquor stores, but there should be strict regulations banning youth under 19 from accessing weed and roadside suspensions for drivers impaired by pot. Local municipalities also want a cut of marijuana revenues to help with enforcement of the rules and a say about where pot shops are set up. Those are some of the messages put forward by all three North Shore municipalities in response to a provincial call for submissions as B.C. considers how legal marijuana will be sold and regulated next year. Those responses received are now posted online by the province. [continues 310 words]
Known for his mishandling of Veterans A airs, corruption scandals within his constabulary and, shall we say, colourful comments on race and marijuana, former Toronto and Ontario police chief Julian Fantino is launching a pot business with a former RCMP senior leader. It has rightly been met with outcry. It exposes not only his personal hypocrisies but also those of the pot legalization process. A focus on criminalizing personal use rather than public health concerns (i.e., accessibility to children, mental health issues) has contributed to the circumstances that make young Black and Indigenous people known to police. Along with carding, illegality of marijuana has introduced more young racialized, especially Black, people to the criminal justice system than is patently fair. [continues 348 words]
Ottawa seeks to undercut black market using 'small-scale growers' OTTAWA - The federal government has revealed part of its strategy for regulating recreational cannabis when it becomes legal in July, proposing to allow "micro-cultivation" while modifying the existing federal licensing scheme for medical marijuana producers to let them sell into the future market. Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor released a 75-page consultation document Tuesday afternoon kicking off a 60-day period for officials, groups and citizens to respond to the plan. [continues 854 words]
Is the word marijuana racist? It's a long-standing debate in the cannabis world, but the question is now slipping into the mainstream as the drug is on the edge of becomingly legal for recreational use. Many people aren't aware of the history of the term marijuana, which is linked to campaigns in the U.S. in the 1930s to demonize the plant by associating it with Mexican immigrants. Halifax Coun. Shawn Cleary recently created controversy when he declared he would no longer use the word. "Let's do what we can to not perpetuate racism," he said on Twitter. [continues 502 words]
The name of the government agency that will sell pot to Ontario has been revealed: the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corp. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. But neither does LCBO, the name of the provincial liquor monolith that sells us whiskey and wine. That acronym is so well known in Ontario that today no one bothers to spell it out. Will the acronym for the new marijuana agency - OCRC - become just as familiar? It has a certain slurry symmetry. It could lend itself to a nickname. How about "Ock-Rock," suggests Trina Fraser, an Ottawa lawyer who specializes in cannabis business law. [continues 633 words]
Hair testing by Motherisk was presented as evidence in a murder case. It was deemed not up to forensic standards, tossed out and even mocked by the judge. That was in Colorado - 22 years before the Motherisk scandal blew up Twenty-two years before controversy shuttered the Motherisk lab, before its hair-strand drug tests were deemed unreliable, before the outcomes of thousands of child protection cases were called into question, a Colorado court threw out Motherisk's evidence in a hearing that foretold the crisis that is now playing out across Canada. [continues 2352 words]
If the Trudeau Liberals were Boy Scouts, they'd be miserable failures in living up to the troop's famous motto of "Be Prepared." Anyone who still thinks the Liberals have all the pieces in place in their rush to legalize the recreational use of marijuana by Canada Day 2018 has being smoking the drapes. Health concerns? Hmmm, perhaps it would have been best to have gotten onto this long before now, seeing as how sucking in THC-laced smoke into the lungs just might have some health repercussions for the burgeoning toker crowd. But that is not the case. While Ottawa's parliamentarians were enjoying their last week of summer recess before returning to the partisan fray, an all-party Commons health committee began meeting only this Monday to question medical and legal professionals on the looming legislation. [continues 288 words]
Only now bothering to consider health impact of legalized marijuana If the Trudeau Liberals were Boy Scouts, they'd be miserable failures in living up to the troop's famous motto of "Be Prepared." Anyone who still thinks the Liberals have all the pieces in place in their rush to legalize the recreational use of marijuana by Canada Day 2018 has being smoking the drapes. Health concerns? Hmmm, perhaps it would have been best to have gotten onto this long before now, seeing as how sucking in THC-laced smoke into the lungs just might have some health repercussions for the burgeoning toker crowd. [continues 513 words]
Charges include fraud, bribery, trafficking A suspended Hamilton police gangs and weapons enforcement unit officer already awaiting trial for his alleged role in helping a drug trafficking organization is facing 16 new criminal charges. On Tuesday, Craig Ruthowsky was charged with bribery, two counts of breach of trust, two counts of obstructing justice, public mischief, two counts of weapons trafficking, fraud under $5,000, trafficking marijuana, perjury, two counts of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, robbery and two counts of trafficking cocaine. [continues 613 words]
One of the Trudeau government's stated policy goals for ending marijuana prohibition is to divert the profits reaped by gangsters toward legitimate shareholders. But an investigation by Greg McArthur and Molly Hayes offers a glimpse into the insidious nature of organized crime, finding that criminal groups easily exploited loopholes in the federal government's old medical-marijuana licensing regimes In the late afternoon of March 14 in the Toronto suburb of Woodbridge, a masked gunman jumped out of the passenger side of a black Jeep Cherokee, darted across a snow-dusted parking lot and unleashed a flurry of bullets into a black BMW. Thirty seconds later, he was back in the car, leaving Saverio Serrano - the son of a notorious Canadian Mafia figure and cocaine importer - wounded, and Mr. Serrano's 28-year-old girlfriend dead. [continues 3221 words]
'Disorganized criminals,' new law force mob, bikers away from meagre earnings Once a relatively safe, profitable business for outlaw bikers and mobsters, organized crime is moving away from the marijuana market because legalization and homegrown pot are making any gain not worth the risk, experts say. The market share in the pot business for organized criminals has already slid as pot-loving "disorganized criminals" perfected their horticultural skills. There wasn't much need to smuggle pot into the country when Canadian cannabis connoisseurs liked the homegrown stuff better, experts say. [continues 285 words]
DAVAO CITY, Philippines - Gen. Ronald dela Rosa, chief of the Philippine National Police, knows the value of a public display of remorse. He has been forced to apologize more than once. He was wrong, he acknowledged before the Philippine Senate as TV cameras rolled, to have trusted undisciplined policemen who killed a small-town mayor suspected of dealing drugs, as the mayor lay defenseless on a jail-cell floor. "I cannot blame the public if they're losing their trust and confidence in their police," he told the Senate panel, accepting a tissue from the mayor's son to wipe away his tears. [continues 1245 words]
There's always been something a bit odd about the great marijuana legalization crusade. Supporters, eager to avoid being seen as a bunch of frustrated pot-heads who just wanted easier access, put forward solid, practical arguments. They pointed out that the war against drugs wasn't working: anyone could see that. People who wanted pot would find a way to get it, no matter how illegal it might be. Police time was wasted chasing kids with a few grams of marijuana, and branding young people as criminals for a bit of pot was a crime in itself. Criminalization just paved the way for organized crime to peddle the stuff to kids, with no controls and huge profits. It made no sense. [continues 867 words]
Corruption - Outside U.S.
