Students who have drug convictions shouldn't lose their financial aid, say members of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP). UTC students are varied in their opinions on this issue. "We recognize the "War on Drugs" has caused a lot of harm and that now there is far too much emphasis on crime and punishment and not enough emphasis on effective strategies at preventing drug use," Tom Angell, the head of SSDP, said. As a part of the "War on Drugs," the Higher Education Act prevents students who have drug convictions from receiving federal student aid, Angell said. [continues 472 words]
Seven drug-smuggling suspects were arrested and about $12 million worth of narcotics was seized in Arizona as part of a nationwide crackdown aimed at a Mexican smuggling cartel that crisscrossed the sand dunes near Yuma and built a submerged bridge across the Colorado River to avoid law enforcement. Ramona Sanchez, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman in Phoenix, said seizures in the Yuma area included 28,000 pounds of marijuana, 93 pounds of cocaine, 4 pounds of methamphetamine and about 2 pounds of heroin. [continues 416 words]
It's about time our local politicians finally acknowledge that letting the heroin addicts have their heroin will reduce crime in our city. I've been banging on about this since 1997, when I started my own political party called www.sosparty.co.uk. I remember people used to look at me as if I had lost my marbles whenever I spoke about my drug policy. I just hope all those people who scoffed at my policy of distributing heroin to addicts via the NHS see sense and acknowledge it's a sensible and practical solution to reducing crime in our city. Matthew Taylor leader, SOS Party Bolney Road, Brighton [end]
UNITED NATIONS - The UN's drug control agency is to warn Tony Clement, the Health Minister, that Canada is flouting international drug control treaties by enabling illicit drug use at a safe injection site in Vancouver and through drug-paraphernalia giveaways elsewhere. Mr. Clement will be urged to shut down the initiatives, which the agency says effectively condone the use of drugs that Canada has agreed in an international forum are banned without a prescription. "In a way [Canada] is encouraging illicit trafficking," Zhu Li-Qin, chief of the Convention Evaluation Section of the UN's International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), said from the agency's headquarters in Vienna. [continues 535 words]
DENVER -- Ken Gorman, an aging missionary of marijuana, was found murdered in his home here two weeks ago. The unsolved crime is exposing the tangled threads at the borderland of the legal and illegal drug worlds he inhabited. Mr. Gorman, who was 60, legally provided marijuana to patients under Colorado's medical marijuana law, but he also openly preached the virtues of illegal use, and even ran for governor in the 1990s on a pro-drug platform. In recent years, he had grown frightened as the mainstream medicine of cannabis care bumped against the unregulated and violent terrain of the illicit drug market. He had been robbed more than a dozen times in his home on Denver's west side, had recently gotten a gun and also talked of installing a steel door and gates. [continues 1187 words]
Pilot project designed to help control problem at province's eight correctional facilities All stakeholders agree a drug-detecting dog will help officials mitigate substance abuse in Alberta's correctional facilities. But not all agree on the scale of drug abuse in jails. "I want to stress that we do not have a large problem with drugs being smuggled into our correctional centres, Solicitor General Ministry spokesman Jill McCormick said Wednesday. The ministry on Wednesday unveiled a one-year, $80,000 pilot project for a Labrador retriever and handler to circulate among Alberta's eight correctional facilities sniffing out drug use among the province's roughly 2,600 inmates. [continues 413 words]
There is a middle ground between drug prohibition and blanket legalisation. Switzerland's heroin maintenance program has been shown to reduce disease, death and crime among chronic users. Providing addicts with standardised doses in a clinical setting eliminates many of the problems associated with heroin use. Heroin maintenance pilot projects are under way in Canada, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. If expanded, prescription heroin maintenance would deprive organised crime of a core client base. This would render illegal heroin trafficking unprofitable and spare future generations' addiction. [continues 65 words]
However contentious borders are in this county, there is one group that ignores them completely: drug traffickers. They'll be one of the primary focuses - specific organizations and specific individuals - of a seven-officer, multi-departmental police team, which is slated to start its duties at the beginning of April. "That's going to be our first area of enforcement," said New Glasgow police chief Lorne Smith. Its formation fills a niche in policing, which in this county, has been without adequate resources for a number of years. The unit will also focus on organized crime. [continues 414 words]
Southern Ontario Police Chiefs Seeing Results of Successful Fight Against Gangs and Guns in Toronto: It's On Their Doorstep Niagara Regional Police Chief Wendy Southall is pleased that Toronto police have been successful in fighting guns and gangs in their city. It's the aftermath of that success she isn't so thrilled about. Southall says criminals finding it too hot in Toronto have moved on to other municipalities in the GTA and Golden Horseshoe, including the Niagara region. "Toronto had the funding to do both reactive and proactive programs," Southall said Wednesday. "Unfortunately that has pushed some of that criminal activity our way." [continues 338 words]
Canadians have three things upon which they can depend: death, taxes and constitutional barriers. Take the situation with methadone. In what other country would the dispensing of methadone by doctors become a constitutional issue? Methadone is a synthetic narcotic, first developed in Germany in 1937 as a pain killer that would be easier to use during surgery than morphine and potentially less addictive post-op. It was brought to the United States in 1947 by Eli Lilly and Company and marketed under the trade name Dolophine. Since the 1990s, its best known application has been in the treatment of narcotic addiction. It is also used to manage chronic pain because of its long duration of action and low cost. It is rigorously well-tested, and is safe and effective for the treatment of opioid withdrawal and dependence when carefully monitored by a physician. [continues 480 words]