It's less than a year before this great but apparently idiotic country plans to legalize marijuana, and some doubts emerged this week over whether that deadline is achievable. Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister - attending the Council of the Federation meetings in Edmonton with the other premiers and territorial leaders - is lobbying his counterparts to push back by a year the federal government's July 2018 date to legalize pot. Pallister says more time is need for provinces to educate the public about the dangers of drugged driving and also for police and the Crown to sort out how to enforce the law around impaired driving related to cannabis. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall also supports an extension and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says that while her province will shoot for the deadline, she may seek an extension. [continues 583 words]
It's less than a year before this great but apparently idiotic country plans to legalize marijuana, and some doubts emerged this week over whether that deadline is achievable. Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister - attending the Council of the Federation meetings in Edmonton with the other premiers and territorial leaders - is lobbying his counterparts to push back by a year the federal government's July 2018 date to legalize pot. Pallister says more time is need for provinces to educate the public about the dangers of drugged driving and also for police and the Crown to sort out how to enforce the law around impaired driving related to cannabis. [continues 619 words]
I t was terrific to see leaders from Surrey RCMP and the Surrey School District offer parents such common-sense advice this week about the drug crisis afflicting our communities. School Superintendent Jordan Tinney and Assistant Commissioner Dwayne McDonald urged parents to talk to their kids about the extremely high level of risk posed by street drugs these days and not to assume that their little darlings aren't experimenting with them. The warning came a few days after Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall made a similar plea, noting that 19 B.C. teenagers have died of overdoses since January 2016 and concerned that teenage drug use may rise soon with year-end parties and summer concerts. [continues 637 words]
A term we hear with increasing frequency is the claim that we need "evidence-based policy" on this or that public issue. With the possible new importance of the B.C. Green party - we'll know more after the final election count on May 24 - you'll be hearing the phrase a lot more as the Greens love the term like yogis love mantras. "Evidence-based policy" started out as a medical term. Doctors wanted evidence on the effectiveness of a treatment before using it. It is the empirical method in action. Constant research examines how patients fare after various procedures, surgeries or drug treatments so doctors can know which treatments are best. [continues 632 words]
Here we are in the biggest fatal overdose epidemic in B.C. history and what's top of mind for the province's addiction treatment experts? The need to "destigmatize" addiction. In fact, let's not even call the taking of deadly illegal drugs an "addiction" or "drug abuse" any more, they tell us. We're supposed to call addicts "patients" with a "substance-use disorder." Excuse me if I don't buy the nicey-nicey language. And I doubt if most people who live in the real world and who have to pay millions of dollars in taxes for all these latest trendy approaches to drug addiction do, either. [continues 703 words]
Another week, another massive study by top doctors and scientists finding limited medicinal value to marijuana. When liberal politicians such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson claim to be implementing "evidence-based" public policy, I find it odd they have such a blind spot with pot. A new report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine - The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research - reviewed 10,700 studies on the medicinal qualities of marijuana and concluded there is "conclusive or substantial evidence that cannabis or cannabinoids are effective" for only three conditions: chronic pain in adults, chemotherapy-induced nausea, and patient-reported multiple sclerosis spasticity. [continues 414 words]
Here we go again. Another week, another massive report by top doctors and scientists finding very limited medicinal value to marijuana. In an age when liberal politicians such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson claim to be implementing "evidence-based" public policy, I find it odd that they have such a blind spot when it comes to pot. A new report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine - The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research - that reviewed the results of 10,700 studies on the medicinal qualities of marijuana concluded that there is "conclusive or substantial evidence that cannabis or cannabinoids are effective" in treating only three conditions: chronic pain in adults, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and patient-reported multiple sclerosis spasticity symptoms (although there was "limited" evidence of "clinician-measured" spasticity relief). [continues 613 words]
Canadians, especially lawmakers, gleefully rushing headlong to legalize marijuana should pause to consider the heartbreaking stabbing death of 13-year-old Letisha Reimer, as innocent a crime victim as one can imagine. Gabriel Brandon Klein, the 21-year-old homeless man from Alberta charged with second-degree murder in the death of the Abbotsford Senior Secondary School student, and aggravated assault in the non-fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old girl in the Nov. 1 attack, was a heavy pot smoker who recently "became manic, paranoid and frightened," some of his friends told CBC. [continues 650 words]
It's just 2/18, but 4/20 is already making headlines. This time it's the war of words between Sarah Kirby-Yung, the Non-Partisan chairwoman of the Vancouver park board, and Mayor Gregor Robertson, her political foe, about where the city's annual pot protest/excuse to fry your brain in public should be held. At least it would be a war of words if the mayor would speak to Kirby-Yung and the citizens he, ahem, "serves" instead of displaying his usual level of leadership by staying out of sight and issuing one of his customary "brief statements" on the issue, if he even participates in writing those missives. My bet is they're cranked out by the political pit vipers who run his office. [continues 777 words]
If you want to read an unprofessional, self-justifying and politically frightening document by a police department, check out the report by Vancouver Deputy Police Chief Doug LePard, urging the police board to dismiss a citizen complaint against his department for neglecting to shut down the city's 120 or so illegal pot shops. The complaint was made in June by Pam McColl of Smart Approaches to Marijuana Canada, a group that opposes the liberalization of marijuana laws. Appallingly, the board took just 10 minutes last Thursday to unanimously dismiss McColl's complaint, which at its core simply asked the VPD to do what every other police department in Canada seems to have no difficulty doing - upholding the country's drug laws. [continues 901 words]
The nonsense and outright lies that the cannabis quacks profess in using the red herring of "medical" marijuana as a wedge issue toward their ultimate goal of fully legal weed can be divided into two groups of assertions. In one are their various claims that marijuana is an all-natural wonder drug that can treat and cure a long list of ailments. Scientists and doctors tell us that's crap. With very few exceptions, studies show that marijuana is useless to treat disease and in most cases where it works, there are other better treatments. [continues 667 words]
With the despotic dopes running Vancouver City Hall expected Wednesday to approve their wholly improper "licensing" of so-called "medical-marijuana" shops, the release Tuesday of the most comprehensive study yet into pot's effectiveness as medicine couldn't come at a better time - or be more deliciously ironic for critics of the plan. With the exception of "moderate-quality" evidence that pot controls pain and spasticity in people with multiple sclerosis, the meta-analysis of 79 studies involving more than 6,000 patients published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that there is little evidence that marijuana is effective for a host of ailments pot proponents often claim it can treat. [continues 557 words]
An important study examining what we know and don't know about the health effects and harms of marijuana on teenagers came out last week and mysteriously - given the current pot debate in B.C., particularly here in the Big Smoke of Vancouver - it received virtually no attention. Then again, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, since the report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse likely won't be embraced by the profit-motivated pot pushers who are trying to control the debate, including around what is hilariously referred to as medical marijuana. [continues 534 words]
There is considerable evidence that narcissism is on the rise, particularly among the young. Many studies show that greater numbers of young people now score higher on standardized tests for narcissism than older folks or young people a generation or two ago. There are a variety of explanations offered up to explain the phenomenon, but the growing consensus among psychologists is that the rising levels of self-centredness, self-admiration and inflated opinions of self-worth are linked to how individualistic Western culture has become in recent decades. [continues 782 words]
"In loco parentis" ought to be Latin for "parenting makes you crazy." Parents deserve a special phrase revealing the wisdom of antiquity for how nuts kids can make you feel at times. But the term, as any lawyer who didn't drink too much in law school can tell you, actually means "in place of the parent." It refers to the legal responsibility of individuals, groups or the government to take on some or all of the responsibilities of a parent when put in charge of someone else's child or others of diminished capacity. [continues 510 words]
No consensus has been reached over how many people turned up at the Vancouver Art Gallery for 420, the annual "celebration of cannabis culture" held every April 20, or as the folks at Frito-Lay call it, "Doritofest." Crowd estimates remain as hazy as much of downtown that afternoon. The Vancouver police pegged the crowd at 5,000 -the lowest of the published estimates -probably from their petulance at being forbidden from using dogs and firehoses to disperse all "them damned, dirty stoners." [continues 818 words]
One of B.C.'s top drug cops is praising a British study that found young people who use the party drug ecstasy risk long-term brain damage. A team of psychologists told the British Psychological Society conference in Glasgow, Scotland, yesterday that regular users may damage the part of their brains that allows people to remember what they have to do next. The study of 40 adults who took ecstasy at least 10 times a month found they had poorer memories than 39 adults who didn't take the drug. [continues 255 words]
The most gorgeous feature of Allen Richardson's $700,000 West Vancouver home is the view. It stretches from Whytecliff Park to Snug Cove on Bowen Island. Now, after 28 years, a New York prosecutor wants him to trade it for a cell in Attica prison. In 1971 -- as 19-year-old physics student and Vietnam War protester Christopher Perlstein -- Richardson was sentenced to four years for selling seven hits of LSD worth $20 in to an undercover cop in his dorm room at Rochester Institute of Technology. [continues 296 words]
An addiction expert says he understands the fear that drove a Port Moody couple to stage a mock home invasion in a desperate bid to rescue their daughter from heroin and prostitution. Trouble is, the parents have risked driving her farther into the arms of the pimps and dealers who have taken control of her life, said Mark Goheen, supervisor of addiction service for SHARE family and community services. "Kids [addicted to drugs] will see that their parents are against them and the only ones who care for them are their pimp or dealer -- their mentors," he said. [continues 1604 words]
B.C.'s grim tide of drug deaths has set a record. In 1998, 365 people died of confirmed or suspected overdoses, B.C. chief coroner Larry Campbell said yesterday. "That is one a day," he said. "This is the worst year ever." The previous record of 356 deaths was set in 1993. Campbell blames the glut of drugs on the street and their relatively low price. The price of cocaine has dropped from $250 a gram a few years ago to $100. The purity of heroin has gone from three to six per cent several years ago to 40 to 50 per cent today. [continues 355 words]
