WASHINGTON - President Trump's plan to use the death penalty on drug dealers has all the hallmarks of his favorite policies: It could fit on the front of a baseball cap. It is a proven applause line. It appeals to a conservative base. But, like so many of Trump's slogans-turned-policy, it's dredged from a bygone era and lacks clear evidence showing it would be effective. Using an obscure federal provision to bring capital cases against dealers, the concept that Trump enthusiastically backed during a visit to New Hampshire this week, fits within the framework of some of his other cornerstone ideas: Build the wall, Launch trade wars, Arm teachers. To some critics in the mainstream, though, the ideas are impractical, imprecise, or just dangerous. [continues 1074 words]
OAKLAND, Calif. - When officers burst into Rickey McCullough's two-story home in Oakland a decade ago they noted a "strong fresh odor of marijuana." Mr. McCullough had been growing large amounts of marijuana illegally, the police said. He was arrested and spent a month in jail. A few weeks ago the city of Oakland, now promoting itself as a hub for marijuana entrepreneurs, awarded Mr. McCullough, 33, a license to sell marijuana and the prospect of interest-free loans. Four hundred miles to the south, in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, Virgil Grant, 50, straddles the same two worlds, but with a different outcome. He was a marijuana dealer in the 1990s whose customers are said to have included rap stars like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac, and he spent more than eight years in prison on marijuana convictions. But his vision of starting a marijuana dispensary in his hometown was dashed in January when the residents of Compton voted decisively to ban marijuana businesses from city limits. [continues 1415 words]
Philadelphia is evolving into a safe haven for cannabis consumers even as arrests increase across Pennsylvania. Newly-elected District Attorney Larry Krasner announced Thursday that he would drop any marijuana possession cases brought to the court by police. A 2014 decriminalization ordinance allowing tickets caused common weed arrests to decline by more than 85 percent. Still, I reported last year that hundreds of racially disparate cases were still being brought to Philly courts each year for less than 30 grams of buds. [continues 639 words]
Pot is hot for Maryland lawmakers in Annapolis this year. The General Assembly is considering more than two dozen bills on marijuana -- or cannabis, as the substance is called when used as a medicine. For marijuana enthusiasts, full legalization for recreational purposes is at the top of the wish list. Bills in both the House and the Senate would put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to let voters decide whether to replace prohibition with a system of regulated sales and taxation. [continues 767 words]
Protesters carrying signs saying "Injustice is fatal!" laid dozens of white carnations next to a coffin on the steps of Montreal City Hall Tuesday, each representing a life lost to a drugoverdose. A coalition of community groups, crisis workers, activists and drug users held a demonstration demanding the government repeal drug laws that marginalize drug users. They also held a moment of silence - joining several vigils held simultaneously across Canada. The opioid crisis claimed nearly 3,000 lives in 2016, and the estimated death toll last year is pegged at 4,000 people. [continues 426 words]
If, five years ago, someone had asked me how I felt about cannabis, I'd assume they were a cop. Even the term "marijuana" - a word believed to be brought to the United States by Mexican migrant workers before the Prohibition era, which was later used to promote racist anti-pot messaging - was a red flag to discreet and casual users such as myself. Weed, cheeba, ganja, sticky-icky, dank nugs - terms the community has appropriated from Rastafarians, West Coast hippies, rappers and Indian yogis: These are the words that would have communicated familiarity and, therefore, acceptance of the habit. But what do you call it now that Canada has developed a sophisticated legal medical program and is close to passing its recreational cannabis legislation? Well, from black-market producers to young workers in illegal dispensaries to the burgeoning, optimistic legal industry: We've all agreed to say cannabis. [continues 1184 words]
The ongoing effort in the Senate to derail the passage of the Liberal government's bill to legalize marijuana is not an exercise in sober second thought, as its Conservative proponents claim, but an attempt to obstruct democracy. The Trudeau government should use the tools at its disposal to push this important legislation through the Upper House. Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, and C-46, which would tighten rules on impaired driving related to marijuana use, have been before the Senate since the Commons passed them in late November. And they may languish there forever if the government does not invoke so-called time allocation, a tool for curtailing debate that the Liberals have largely eschewed. [continues 491 words]
An unusual aspect of Canada's soon-to-be-legal cannabis market is that the activists who led the legalization movement may find themselves excluded from the industry for which their efforts paved the way. Vancouver activists like Jodie and Marc Emery and dispensary pioneer Don Briere, for example, have criminal records for possessing and selling marijuana. Now those criminal records could be used against them in federal and provincial licensing systems that are under development to decide who gets to cultivate and sell recreational cannabis. [continues 769 words]
B.C. has announced $20 million over three years for First Nations communities struggling with the drug-overdose crisis that's disproportionately affecting Indigenous communities. The funding will be administered by the First Nations Health Authority, which delivers services in partnership with First Nations communities. It is part of $322 million announced in last September's budget update. About 1,400 people died of illicit drug overdoses in the province last year, according to the B.C. Coroners Service. Indigenous people are five times more likely to experience an overdose than the general population and die at a rate three times greater, said Judy Darcy, minister of mental health and addictions. [continues 426 words]
"Entrepreneurial" is one of the terms used to describe a bunch of Canadian bootleggers who found varying success in the illicit running of alcohol to the U.S. about a century ago. They are portrayed as swashbuckling adventurers who dared to defy laws that banned alcohol, laws that in retrospect were not only archaic but perhaps misplaced and costly. They are fondly posited as cheeky and rebellious, the forerunners of a liberal era of alcohol-infused pleasures. It was legal in Canada to produce alcohol - prohibition was lifted by the 1920s - while Americans still faced a ban. That illicit trade was the building blocks on which Canadian distilleries, the suppliers of that booze, made a fortune. The histories of the Bronfman family (who owned Seagram) and the Corbys, among others, are just a Google search away. [continues 724 words]
Lawyers contemplate class action to push government into cannabis amnesty OTTAWA - At Anthony Morgan's law office, the calls keep coming: Parents of young black men hoping their son's marijuana possession charge will be wiped clean when the country legalizes the drug this year. The Liberal government has talked about granting amnesty for past marijuana crimes, but isn't likely to move until after the new cannabis regime comes into effect this summer. For black communities across the country, that's not soon enough - and frustrated lawyers in Toronto are now considering lighting a fire under the feds with a class-action lawsuit. [continues 796 words]
Sometimes so little is going through my head that if Ralph were to say something, I'd actually have room to listen to him. Those few times that's happened also seems to be my week to write an article which then leaves me scrambling. Other times, I start the article only to be sideswiped by some event making me set it aside and start over. Such as todays. I am an old fogey when it comes to the decriminalization of marijuana. [continues 777 words]
When California voters legalized recreational weed in 2016, they made the law retroactive, allowing residents to petition to overturn or reduce old convictions for possession, cultivation and distribution of marijuana. But it is a difficult and expensive legal procedure, advocates say, and many people are not even aware they are now eligible to clean up their records. State courts received 4,885 petitions in the first 11 months after Proposition 64 passed, while the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance found more than 460,000 arrests for marijuana offenses between 2006 and 2015 alone. [continues 275 words]
Group to ask about opioid crisis at town hall Edmontonians will line up at MacEwan University on Thursday in hopes of getting face time with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Moms Stop the Harm, a group of parents who have lost children to drug overdoses, plans to have 10 to 15 members at the town hall to challenge the PM on the opioid crisis. "It's very upsetting for us how silent he has been on this issue," said group member Petra Schulz. "There are thousands of Canadian families like ours that are mourning the loss of a loved one, and the prime minister has not even spoken on the issue in the house." [continues 310 words]
Dissenting opinion found charter rights were violated during 'fishing expedition' A senior Ontario judge has called out Toronto police officers who arrested a man on gun and drug charges for "casually intimidating and oppressive misconduct," and wondered if their actions would have been different in a whiter and wealthier neighbourhood. The criticism came in a dissenting opinion from Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Peter Lauwers, who recently disagreed with his two colleagues on a panel hearing the appeal of Tom Le, convicted in 2014 of firearm and drug-related offences and sentenced to five years in prison. [continues 742 words]
Punitive approach behind OD crisis, Susan Boyd says. Canada has been inching toward legal regulation of cannabis for many years. But the fears that paralyzed our country for more than a century are still very much in evidence, despite decades of proof that none of the punitive policies we cling to help reduce drug-related harm. Increasingly, drug prohibition is understood as an issue of social justice and human rights by those who have fought for a better way. The history of Canadian drug prohibition is marked by many pivotal moments and challenges to the status quo, brought forward with passion and insight by community activists, people who use drugs, organizations, constitutional lawyers, researchers, and health and service providers. [continues 633 words]
When I think about the people I've met in Kensington over the last eight months, the people who've opened up to me about their addiction, about their lives, talking to me from the cardboard mattresses and train bridges and alleyways and library lawns where they live, I think about the ones I haven't seen in a while. No, Philly did not just approve of 'Hamsterdam' Could City Council block Kenney's proposed safe injection sites? I think about how many of them by now are dead. [continues 752 words]
The Trudeau government's decision to legalize marijuana was a welcome and overdue acknowledgement of what has in recent decades become a truism of both the health and justice fields: treating pot-smokers as criminals is a costly, dangerous mistake. The government is right that the prohibition on pot has driven up the cost of policing, contributed to a national crisis of court delays, compounded racial and class inequities and unnecessarily criminalized people for doing something that by and large poses little threat to them or others - all without delivering the promised benefits for public health or public safety. [continues 559 words]
Legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada is only a few months away, but it's going to take a lot longer than that to clean up the mess left behind from almost a century of prohibition. One of the most pressing issues has to be to wipe the slate clean for Canadians who have criminal records for possession. When Bill C-45 (the Cannabis Act) was tabled, the government said there would be no general amnesty for past convictions. But now it seems the Liberals are starting to come to their senses - at least a bit. [continues 679 words]
If drug users shouldn't be treated as criminals, then Canadians who have criminal records for pot possession convictions should receive amnesty The Trudeau government's decision to legalize marijuana was a welcome and overdue acknowledgement of what has in recent decades become a truism of both the health and justice fields: Treating pot smokers as criminals is a costly, dangerous mistake. The government is right that the prohibition on pot has driven up the cost of policing, contributed to a national crisis of court delays, compounded racial and class inequities and unnecessarily criminalized people for doing something that by and large poses little threat to them or others - all without delivering the promised benefits for public health or public safety. [continues 566 words]
