Filed under: Hemp&Law, hemp in general | Tags: canada, cannabis, ganja, grow, hashish, hemp, marijuana, pot, skunk, weed
POLICE TAKE TO SKIES TO STOP OUTDOOR GROW-OPS
A integrated police team combing Vancouver Island from the sky looking for marijuana grow-ops expects to seize more than 20,000 plants.
The team is expected to find a significant amount of outdoor pot as the growing season now comes to an end, says Const. Darren Lagan of the Island District RCMP.
“Based on what we have seen in the air so far, we will get 20,000 plants altogether,” Lagan said Friday.
The goal of the annual fall police project is to locate and destroy marijuana grown outdoors, which is often on Crown land, notes Lagan.
While he noted police may be able to detect grow-ops from a helicopter, they can not always get into the isolated areas to tear them down.
“The number of sites we get to depends on weather and location,” said Lagan.
“Through our partnership with the Canadian military, we are able to utilize their expertise and equipment to gain access to these challenging locations,” added Lagan.
Last year, he said, the fall detection program on the Island netted RCMP about 20,000 plants.
And Lagan pointed out that many of those they busted last year set up in a new location: “They will change location from year to year, but were atuned to that.”
Outdoor pot production poses significant environmental risk, he said.
Streams are often diverted, growth-enhancing chemicals and pesticides are introduced into pristine lands and garbage is left behind at many of the sites, said Lagan.
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Website: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/
22 Mar 2008
Cowichan News Leader
Since the current incarnation of Canada’s medical marijuana program was established, doctors have been forced by Health Canada to act as sentinels for a product whose complexities, methods of delivery and side effects they have little firsthand information.
It’s a situation that leaves many physicians hesitant to sign their names to the documents required for patients to access government pot.
“Our No. 1 complaint is that patients can’t find a doctor who will endorse their MMAD application,” says Eric Nash of Duncan’s Island Harvest.
However, physicians’ reluctance often has more to do with the bureaucratic reach of Health Canada than it does with their own personal misgivings about prescribing a drug that remains in legal limbo.
The Canadian Medical Association is slowly coming around to recognizing the valuable role medical cannabis can play in helping users achieve a higher quality of life.
But as recently as 2003 then-CMA president Dana Hanson said, “physicians should not be the gatekeeper for a substance for which we do not have adequate scientific proof of safety or efficacy.”
Observers say the CMA’s regularly parroted line rings hollow when general practitioners regularly prescribe drugs with little more knowledge than what they were told by representatives of the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture them.
The Canadian Medical Protective Association, the organization that insures 95 per cent of Canada’s physicians, continues to issue its doctors a release from liability form that protects them from legal action relating to a clients’ use of medical marijuana.
No such special form is required when prescribing addictive and dangerous drugs like Valium and codeine.
South of the border-where the “war on drugs” drags on-the 124,000-member American College of Physicians released a January 2008 position paper that supports comprehensive research into the therapeutic uses of medical marijuana.
It concludes: “Evidence not only supports the use of medical marijuana in certain conditions but also suggests numerous indications for cannabinoids. Additional research is needed to further clarify the therapeutic value of cannabinoids and determine optimal routes of administration.”
In Canada, new government research on the therapeutic value of medical marijuana will be a long time coming given the Harper government’s cancellation of the $4-million Medical Marijuana Research Program in 2006.
The continuing prohibitionist view of the product by Health Canada and its political masters necessitates a need to micromanage distribution of the drug. It is this overt control that makes doctors wary of becoming entangled in the bureaucracy that accompanies the MMAR.
During the past few years, Health Canada has taken to phoning doctors directly to question attempts to prescribe more than five daily grams to a patient.
Physicians and patients alike see this as a gross invasion of their privacy. It seems Health Canada may also be awakening to that fact.
In a March 2007 correspondence obtained by Canadians for Safe Access through an ATI request, MMAD division program manager Barry Jones tells MMAD manager Ronald Denault: “I also feel that we may be going more into the realm of influencing, rather than informing the renewals.”
In a 2007 letter to Jason Wilcox, Denault writes, “The use of dried marijuana for medical purposes has not yet been proven scientifically.”
For chronically and terminally sick Canadians, the country’s physicians are not so ill-informed as to overlook the benefits their patients derive from medical cannabis and often will endorse compassion club applications.
“Doctors would rather sign a form for a quasi-legal, grey market source like a compassion club, than get involved with Health Canada,” says Vancouver Island Compassion Society’s Philippe Lucas.
Filed under: Hemp&Law | Tags: canada, cannabis, cannabis law, drug war, prohibitionism
WHEREAS cannabis has a long history of social, religious and medicinal use in a wide variety of cultures around the world,
WHEREAS government figures estimate 3 million Canadians, or 14% of Canada’s population, are current cannabis users, and that about 45% of Canadians have used cannabis during their lifetime, and that virtually all of these people are otherwise law-abiding citizens,
WHEREAS numerous public opinion polls conducted since 2000 show that most Canadians support eliminating criminal penalties for cannabis,
WHEREAS the value of the Canadian cannabis industry is estimated at between 5 and 20 billion dollars, and that if taxed and regulated this industry would generate substantial revenues for provincial and federal governments,
WHEREAS over 20,000 Canadians are arrested each year just for cannabis possession, taking up a great deal of police and court time and resources,
WHEREAS the laws prohibiting cannabis are federal laws, yet the brunt of the costs of enforcing criminal sanctions against cannabis are borne by the provinces, in paying for the extra policing, court time and imprisonment,
WHEREAS studies into worldwide cannabis law have consistently shown that criminal prohibition of cannabis has little or no effect on the rate of use,
WHEREAS in 1971 the LeDain Commission on Non-Medical Use of Drugs, after exhaustive hearings and research, recommended allowing the cultivation and possession of cannabis for personal use,
WHEREAS the 1995 Report of the Task Force into Illicit Narcotic Overdose Deaths in British Columbia, written by BC’s Chief Coroner and commissioned by BC’s NDP government, after extensive hearings and research, recommended that the BC Attorney General pursue discussions with the federal government on legalization of cannabis possession,
WHEREAS in 2002 the Canadian Senate issued a comprehensive report on cannabis issues, after extensive research and hearings, which recommended that cannabis should be made legally available to adults and regulated by provincial governments in the same way that they operate the wine industry, plus that Canada’s 600,000 criminal records for cannabis possession should be erased, and that access to medical cannabis should be expanded,
WHEREAS in 2005 the City of Vancouver approved a plan called Preventing Harm from Psychoactive Drug Use, which recommends that the federal government end cannabis prohibition and instead create a “legal regulatory framework for cannabis,”
WHEREAS the criminal prohibition of cannabis use and personal cultivation is inconsistent with the principles of “full economic, political and religious liberty for all” and the creation of a legal system which “must not be based, as is the present one, upon vengeance and fear, but upon an understanding of human behaviour,” as enshrined in the 1933 Regina Manifesto.
WHEREAS the criminal prohibition of cannabis use is inconsistent with the creation of “a society in which the worth and dignity of every human being is recognized and respected, and in which differences of origin, of religion and of opinion will be not only tolerated but valued as desirable and necessary to the beauty and richness of the human mosaic,” as enshrined in the 1983 Statement of Principles adopted at the 12th Federal NDP Convention in Regina,
WHEREAS the policy of Canada’s federal NDP has long included a non-punitive, regulatory approach to cannabis, including a legally regulated and taxed cannabis supply, elimination of penalties for personal possession and cultivation, and amnesty for past possession convictions,
WHEREAS the policy of the Ontario NDP explicitly supports that of the federal party, and includes a non-punitive approach to cannabis, with a regulated and taxed legal cannabis supply,
WHEREAS previous leaders of some of the other Provincial NDP parties have made public statements concerning Canada’s cannabis laws which are inconsistent with the non-punitive cannabis policy of the federal party,
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT every provincial NDP party formally establish an explicit cannabis policy based upon a non-punitive, regulatory approach, including support for a legal supply of cannabis, elimination of all penalties for personal cultivation and possession, and amnesty for past cannabis possession convictions.
References: http://www.endprohibition.ca/
Isn’t it time to stop arresting marijuana growers and users by ending prohibition?
Adults in Canada believe the consumption of cannabis should be allowed in their country, according to a poll by Angus Reid Strategies. 53 per cent of respondents support the legalization of marijuana. Less than 10 per cent of respondents believe other drugs — such as ecstasy, powder cocaine, heroin, crack cocaine and crystal meth — should be legalized. In July 2002, Canada became the first nation in the world to regulate the consumption of cannabis for medical reasons.
In the 2004 federal election, the Marijuana party — which seeks the outright legalization of the substance — received 0.3 per cent of the popular vote. In November 2004, the Canadian federal government — headed at the time by Liberal prime minister Paul Martin — re-introduced a controversial bill that sought “alternate penalty frameworks” for the possession of small amounts of marijuana. The bill, which would have allowed any person caught with 15 grams of the drug or less to face fines instead of criminal charges, was never put to a vote in the House of Commons.
Earlier this month, Debbie Stultz-Giffin — a member of Maritimers United for Medical Marijuana — urged the current administration to abandon its proposal to authorize a mandatory six-month prison sentence for marijuana growers, adding, “With the federal government talking about pulling exemption holders grow permits and forcing us to buy our marijuana from the government, it’s going to put a lot of medical marijuana patients in a precarious situation.”
Polling Data
Do you support the legalization of the following?
Marijuana
May 2008 – 53%
Oct. 2007 – 51%
Jun. 2007 – 55%
Source: Angus Reid Strategies
Methodology: Online interviews with 1,004 Canadian adults, conducted on May 8-9, 2008. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.
