• Events

    The Boston Freedom Rally

    The 22nd Annual Masscann/NORML Boston Freedom Rally, September 17, 2011, High Noon, Boston Common

    Boston Freedom Rally

    The Boston Freedom Rally is an annual event in Boston, Massachusetts. Held on the third Saturday in September, it is traditionally the second largest annual gathering demanding marijuana law reform in the United States, after the Seattle Hempfest. It is organized by the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition (MASS CANN), the Massachusetts state affiliate of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws also known as MASS CANN/NORML.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net - Law Enforcement & Prisons

    Too Many Cops?

    The crime rate is down but police forces are growing. We’re poorer as a result, but not necessarily any safer.

    by Ken MacQueen, and Patricia Treble

    This spring, Tamara Cartwright dropped off an envelope at her local post office outside Lethbridge, Alta. A friend had sent her a jar of hemp-based ointment, so she replied with a thank you card, wrote her name and return address on the envelope and, in a decision certain to haunt her for years to come, enclosed four grams of her homegrown marijuana, enough for perhaps four cigarettes. On an April morning some days later she returned to the post office to pick up another package. Moments later, police pulled her over, handcuffed her, put her in a cruiser and hauled her off to the police station.

    It made quite a spectacle, says the 41-year-old mother of four, who suffers from colitis and is one of more than 10,000 medical marijuana patients registered with Health Canada. “It was embarrassing,” she says. “I was still in my pyjamas.” She emerged four hours later with a trafficking charge for giving away those four grams.

    Her charge is part of a recent marked increase in arrests for cannabis offences. Cannabis arrests jumped 13 per cent in 2010 to 75,126. Of those, almost 57,000 were for simple possession, a 14 per cent jump from the year before. (The statistics reflect cases where the arrest was the most serious charge a person faced, not the thousands more where a pot charge was tacked onto a string of more serious crimes.) The cannabis arrest rate is an anomaly at a time when the overall crime rate in 2010 fell to its lowest level since the mid-1970s.

    Ironically, Cartwright’s legal predicament may be linked to that falling crime rate, which comes at a time when policing costs are climbing relentlessly and the number of sworn officers in Canada is at its highest level in almost 30 years. It may simply be that with less overall crime, police have the time, staffing and inclination to focus on minor drug arrests. The vast majority of those arrested are younger than 24, and mostly male, if past findings hold true. And the majority of those arrests are for pot possession, “the low-lying fruit,” as Dalhousie University criminologist Christopher Murphy puts it.

  • Events

    Seattle Hempfest

    Seattle Hempfest is held the third weekend in August each year. The next Seattle Hempfest is August 19-20-21, 2011,.

    It’s open to the public on Friday from 12 noon to 8 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday from 10 am to 8 pm. Admission to Seattle Hempfest is free.

    The event spans three Seattle waterfront parks: Centennial Park, formerly Elliott Bay Park (North Entrance), Myrtle Edwards Park, and Olympic Sculpture Park (South Entrance).

  • Letter of the Week

    Traumatic

    Re: “Grow op kids need help,” Editorial, July 30.

    I must take issue with your editorial regarding the removal of children from homes where there is illegal marijuana being grown.

    You spoke of the authorities and the parents, but you forgot the children themselves. What impact do you think it has on a child when the police storm a home, arrest the parents and then tell the children they are being taken away to a strange place by strangers for an unknown length of time? Where are those children going to be placed? Who will be caring for them? When can they see their parents again? Can you assure them the parents still love them? How do you assure those children they have done nothing wrong and are not being punished, as you hand them over to strangers?

    To remove a child from his or her known world is one of the most frightening things one can ever do to a child. It has a far deeper traumatic impact than does parental neglect or punishment and once it happens, that emotional trauma can never be erased. These are a few of the factors your editorial neglected to consider.

    Grace Isaak

    Calgary

    — MAP Posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

    Pubdate: Tue, 02 Aug 2011
    Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
    Copyright: 2011 Canwest Publishing Inc.
    Contact: http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/letters.html
    Website: http://www.calgaryherald.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
    Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n495/a06.html

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    The War on Drugs: Doubling Down on a Bad Bet

    According to The New York Times, America’s war on drugs has entered a new phase: It’s so successful that the CIA is planning to send retired military personnel and private contractors to Mexico to bring the battle to the doorstep of the organized crime cartels. Well, that’s not quite the story. The decision to deploy mercenaries in Mexico is definitely from the Times, but the part about the success of the drug war is pure Washington spin.

    Indeed, the idea that the federal government is prepared to commit more money and more lives – and that Mexican officials are prepared to let Yanquis join the fight – is testament to desperation on both sides of the border. The war on drugs, now in its fifth decade, was never winnable. All that’s keeping it going is bureaucratic inertia, and a lot of politicians who would rather destroy civil government in Mexico than admit that it takes more than true grit to prevail.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Majority of Americans Ready to Legalize Marijuana

    As was the case last year, most respondents believe the “War on Drugs” has been a failure.

    Many Americans continue to believe that marijuana should be legalized, but are not supportive of making other drugs readily available, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found.

    In the online survey of a representative national sample of 1,003 American adults, 55 per cent of respondents support the legalization of marijuana, while 40 per cent oppose it.

    The groups that are the most supportive of making cannabis legal in the U.S. are Democrats (63%), Independents (61%), Men (57%) and respondents aged 35-to-54 (57%).

    However, only 10 per cent of Americans support legalizing ecstasy. Smaller proportions of respondents would consent to the legalization of powder cocaine (9%), heroin (8%), methamphetamine or “crystal meth” (7%), and crack cocaine (7%).

    Across the country, 64 per cent of respondents believe America has a serious drug abuse problem that affects the entire United States, while one-in-five (20%) perceive a drug abuse problem that is confined to specific areas and people. One-in-twenty Americans (5%) think America does not have a serious drug abuse problem.

    Only nine per cent of respondents believe the “War on Drugs”—the efforts of the U.S. government to reduce the illegal drug trade—has been a success, while two thirds (67%) deem it a failure.

  • Letter of the Week

    ‘War On Drugs’ Distracts From Fighting Crime

    Re: “Legal drugs and gangs,” July 1.

    The editorial on the failed “war on drugs” is music to the ears of the criminal justice professionals who make up Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. We know, from personal experience, that prohibition enriches criminal gangs and fosters criminal activity while doing nothing to reduce drug use and the attendant violence in our cities.

    Forty years of the so-called “war on drugs” in North America has actually increased the supply and potency of illegal drugs. Countries which have removed criminal penalties for drug use, such as the Netherlands and Portugal, have achieved declines in use and addiction.

    Prohibition is a threat to public safety. Making drugs illegal has created a profitable black market, and participants in the underground economy can settle their disputes only by violence. Uninvolved bystanders and police officers often pay the price.

    So many police officers and prosecutors are bogged down in drug enforcement that serious crimes go unsolved. In 1963, before the “war on drugs,” all but 15 per cent of murder cases in the U.S. were solved. Today, 40 per cent of murders never lead to a conviction, even though law enforcement now has vastly better forensic tools and technology.

    Let’s legalize drugs and bring the trade above ground where we can regulate and control it.

    John Anderson
    Chair, Criminology Department
    Vancouver Island University

    — MAP Posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

    Pubdate: Tue, 26 Jul 2011
    Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
    Copyright: 2011 Times Colonist
    Website: http://www.timescolonist.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Crack Pipe Pilot Program Sparks Social Media Debate

    TORONTO – Crack addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside will soon be able to pick up free, clean crack pipes from their local health authority as part of the city’s harm-reduction strategy to curb the transmission of diseases through pipe sharing.

    Advocates say the new pilot project, which hits streets in October, will help health care and social workers connect with at-risk drug addicts, potentially bringing them into the health care system and exposing them to rehab options.