Abbotsford-Mission was declared the "murder capital of Canada" for its homicide rates in 2008 and 2009 - at the height of a drug war between the Red Scorpions and UN gangs.

Now a different gang conflict is putting the area back in the running for the title.

The Abbotsford-Mission census metropolitan (CMA) area tallied 10 murders in 2017, one in Mission and nine in Abbotsford.

The local CMA is one of 33 included in Statistics Canada homicide rates formally released every July for the previous year.

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Dear editor: This is a response to Gord Marshall's wherein he states "Pot smokers will hurt the water system" (Daily Courier, Jan. 9).

Mr. Marshall, your statement may or may not be true. From what I have seen, pot smokers generally keep their roaches, as they are called (not butts), because pot is expensive and the old roach material can be used later in another joint or pipe. There is very little waste.

Also, people don't hang out on the corner drinking beer because there are bars to go to, where you can relax and have a drink. Very civilized. Looks like pot smokers will have no such luxury.

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Marijuana, cannabis, pot, whatever you want to call it, it will become legal in Canada sometime this year following the U.S. where pot is legal in several states.

I do not smoke pot or anything else. Two glasses of wine and I am asleep. I do get high though watching the Patriots and the Red Sox win. I am also asthmatic and any kind of smoke bothers me. There is a lot of kerfuffle going on and this is my take on this hot topic.

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The Kettlewell family has been in the business of selling alcohol for decades. These days, the family owns 11 liquor stores in British Columbia.

Business has been good, as the Kettlewells have doubled the number of their Jak's Beer Wine Spirits stores in the past five years. But what most intrigues the Kettlewells these days is a new product: cannabis.

The emerging rules around the legalization of cannabis vary by province. In general, governments will be heavily involved - and the sale of cannabis will be kept apart from alcohol, following Ottawa's recommendation. In B.C., however, a unique landscape is being considered, one in which government-owned liquor stores, as well as private liquor stores, sell cannabis. Alongside these stores, currently illegal cannabis dispensaries might also be allowed to operate in the legal market.

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Jennifer Montgomery, 31, was charged with a number of drug offences after Mounties obtained a search warrant for her home

Police had every right to use text messages found on a woman's phone to launch a subsequent drug investigation inside the home she had just left, a judge ruled Wednesday in Penticton. The validity of that tactic was challenged in a voir dire at the outset of the B.C. Supreme Court trial for Jennifer Montgomery, 31, who is charged with possession of methamphetamine for the purpose of trafficking, plus simple possession of heroin and methamphetamine.

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Will the selling of marijuana in liquor stores result in poor health outcomes, higher health costs and more impaired driving?

The answer, according to two credible and well-respected medical professionals, is a resounding "yes," and it's an answer they are trying to get the NDP government to sit up and take notice of.

Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.'s long-serving chief provincial health officer, and Dr. Marcus Lem, the chairman of the Health Officers Council of B.C., are leading the charge against what is a widespread assumption that liquor stores will indeed be the primary outlet for the sales of cannabis once it becomes legal on July 1st.

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Adverse childhood experiences linked to drug abuse, says TrinaLarsen Soles.

The opioid epidemic is the biggest public health crisis to hit B.C. in decades. Upwards of four people a day are dying of overdoses, usually due to fentanyl poisoning of the street drug supply.

To date the B.C. government has committed $322 million to address the crisis, including opening more supervised consumption sites, providing naloxone kits, urging people not to use alone, and trying to stop tainted drugs from coming into B.C.

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The B.C. government will soon be weeding through resumes as the province looks to hire the right people to run its marijuana-sales business.

The province will be the sole wholesale distributor of recreational pot through the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch when cannabis becomes legal across Canada, which is expected to happen this summer.

The B.C. Public Service Agency is advertising two jobs - executive director and director of merchandising - for the liquor branch's cannabis operations.

Qualifications for the executive director job, which pays between $126,000 and $140,000 a year, include having a post-secondary degree in a related field and "several years of progressive senior leadership experience" in leading a wholesale and retail division.

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They climb high buildings, bend steel and do dangerous jobs with little room for error, but while sounding a bit like superheroes, many fly under the radar as they struggle with mental health and addiction problems.

A construction industry program that offers additional services and mental health treatment has seen demand more than double in the past year, driven by the fentanyl epidemic and the organization's efforts to reach more workers.

"It is frightening what is happening in our industry. One of the reasons we are seeing so many people coming in is because they are scared," Vicky Waldron, executive director of the Construction Industry Rehabilitation Plan, told Postmedia News.

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One can only hope that people around the world are enlightened enough not to follow Canada's commitment to making its citizens brainless for good all for the sake of a vibrant marijuana industry making big money.

The euphoria marijuana creates is short, while the miserable life it sometimes produces for its worshippers is a struggle and not the kind of life worth living.

Bozenna Siedlecka, Port Moody

[end]

To the editor:

Re: Legalized marijuana will be a gateway drug, Letters, Dec. 28.

I read with interest the opinion that marijuana will lead to becoming a junkie.

From the age of 25 to around the age of 55, I smoked pot every day. I never encountered the day the marijuana failed to get me high. Some strains were more effective than others, but with the hundreds of fellow smokers I met over this time, only a few would go on cocaine benders but never made it a habit. There were doctors, lawyers, mechanics, school teachers and just about every walk of life who enjoyed a puff every day. In my life I have seen many more lives ravaged by booze than pot.

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VANCOUVER - Dan Sutton always assumed cannabis had to be grown indoors.

The former technology professional was new to the marijuana industry in 2012 when he founded Tantalus Labs. The stereotypical image of a large industrial warehouse, with pot plants growing under bright lights and fans, loomed large in his mind.

But when Sutton asked academics, horticulturists and engineers for advice, they all told him that no crop on the planet is grown indoors on a commercial scale.

"It just doesn't really make a huge amount of sense to replace the energy of sunlight, which is so abundant and obviously healthy for leafy green crops, with a synthetic alternative," he said.

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Dear editor:

Re: "Looking ahead to 2018," editorial by James Miller (Daily Courier, Jan. 2).

Miller's statement that "most Canadians support legalizing pot," where does he get his information on this presumption?

I believe it's completely opposite to Miller's so-called facts. Most Canadians do not support Prime Minister Trudeau's pot plan for Canada. We will become potheads all because of just a few potheads from the big cities like Vancouver and back east.

I would guess that 80 per cent of Canadians are against it, or maybe as high as 90 per cent. So 10 or 20 per cent doesn't sound to me as "most Canadians."

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Re: Op-ed by marijuana industry investor Dan Kriznic.

It appears Kriznic has been sampling his product. That's the only way I can account for his over-the-top description of what's going on in the money grubbing battle for pot dollars.

I get it that this move is in the cards since people refuse to just quit. But to describe the Canadian marijuana model as showing the world "something noble and dignified, a structure that will draw people from around the world seeking education and enlightenment" makes marijuana's legalization sound like the discovery of penicillin.

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Nelson council will hold a public hearing on Monday about its intention to disallow recreational cannabis businesses at least until July. It plans to do this through change to its zoning bylaw.

Council decided in December that it wants this moratorium because it does not want anyone opening up a recreational cannabis business in Nelson before federal and provincial rules are made known in the summer, and before council has carried out a public consultation process that will start this month.

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Dear editor: Re: "Looking ahead to 2018," editorial by James Miller (Daily Courier, Jan. 2).

Miller's statement that "most Canadians support legalizing pot," where does he get his information on this presumption?

I believe it's completely opposite to Miller's so-called facts. Most Canadians do not support Prime Minister Trudeau's pot plan for Canada.

We will become potheads all because of just a few potheads from the big cities like Vancouver and back east.

I would guess that 80 per cent of Canadians are against it, or maybe as high as 90 per cent. So 10 or 20 per cent doesn't sound to me as "most Canadians."

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Vancouver - Canada's marijuana industry is expanding rapidly and some First Nations are looking to cash in on the emerging economic opportunities.

Phil Fontaine, an Indigenous politician turned marijuana executive, has spent the last year travelling the country and talking to First Nations about jobs, wealth and training opportunities the burgeoning marijuana business could bring.

"Everywhere we've been, it's been the same reaction, interest, excitement. First Nations are speaking about possibilities and potential. So it's been very encouraging," said the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

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Vancouver has a history pioneering harm-reduction programs. In 2003, it opened North America's first supervised-injection facility, Insite. In 2014, it moved a prescription-heroin program beyond the confines of an academic study.

Now B.C. will launch its most radical drug program yet. It's a plan that one of the province's top doctors says could be a partial solution to the province's opioid crisis.

Tentatively scheduled to begin in March 2018, Vancouver will dispense hydromorphone-a synthetic opioid similar to heroin-in a way that, if all goes according to plan, will not require a doctor's visit and possibly not even a prescription for the powerful drug.

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Feds have promised a deadline of July 1, 2018

The day marijuana advocates and enthusiasts have long been waiting for what will come in 2018 - recreational marijuana will be legalized on Canada Day.

But with federal legislation comes a host of logistical and revenue issues for provinces and cities across the country. Vancouver may appear to have a head start, as the city established a licensing program for marijuana dispensaries in 2015, but it will need to follow provincial rules on the issue as well.

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Making a safe opioid available in vending machines may be the next harm-reduction tool to fight the deadly overdose epidemic, says the executive medical director of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

Dr. Mark Tyndall said he envisions a regulated system where drug users would be assessed, registered and issued a card to use in vending machines to obtain hydromorphone, a painkiller commonly marketed under the brand name Dilaudid.

"I'm hoping that it's kind of like supervised injection sites," he said of the program that could begin as early as next March. "At first it sounded a bit off the wall and now it's pretty well accepted."

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