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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.
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Leaf introduces Dr. William Courtney and Kristen Peskuski of Cannabis International; along with the people involved in researching, promoting, regulating and benefiting from raw cannabis.
Dr. Courtney is a physician and researcher from Mendocino, California, who gives medical marijuana approvals to qualified patients in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties. Kristen Peskuski is a researcher and patient who put her systemic lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, interstitial cystitis, and numerous other conditions into remission juicing fresh cannabis.
They help make sense of the science behind patient’s recoveries from a diverse range of medical conditions. Attorneys, physicians, law enforcement, medical care providers, patients and their families discuss their experiences with medical cannabis. They specifically focus on juicing fresh cannabis, which is non-psychoactive and contains medical properties 200-400 times stronger than traditional, heated cannabis.
Patients have reported success with osteo and rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disorders, cancer and many other conditions using this unique therapy.
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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.
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By Maia Szalavitz
The idea that “marijuana makes you dumb” has long been embodied in the stereotype of the slow, stupid stoner, seen in numerous Hollywood movies and TV comedies and going unquestioned by much of American culture. But a new study says no: the researchers followed nearly 2,000 young Australian adults for eight years and found that marijuana has little long-term effect on learning and memory— and any cognitive damage that does occur as a result of cannabis use is reversible.
Participants were aged 20-24 at the start of the study, which was part of a larger project on community health. Researchers categorized them as light, heavy, former or non-users of cannabis based on their answers to questions about marijuana habits.
Light use was defined as smoking monthly or less frequently; heavy use was weekly or more often. Former users had to have not smoked for at least a year. Fully 72% of the participants were non-users or former users; 18% were light users and 9% were heavy current users. Prior studies have found that drug users do accurately report their consumption levels in surveys like this as long as anonymity is guaranteed and there are no negative consequences for telling the truth.
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As you may be aware, Health Canada last month announced some proposed amendment to the MMAR and are engaging in a consultation period this month. More information can be found on their website: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/marihuana/index-eng.php.
The Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries has launched a “Dispensaries are Indispensable” National Endorsement Campaign. The Campaign is aimed at collecting endorsements from medical cannabis patients who access their medicine at dispensaries across Canada. We want to send a message to Health Canada that dispensaries are providing patients with valuable and valued services and should be included in the legal framework of medical cannabis in Canada.
Please sign an endorsement online if you access your cannabis at a dispensary in Canada, and please feel free to put a link to this campaign on your various websites: http://thecompassionclub.org/endorsementcampaign
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By David Ferguson
Saturday, July 9th, 2011The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office estimates that it saved the city two million dollars in revenue through a new program designed to deal with individuals arrested with less than 30 grams (slightly more than one ounce) of marijuana.
According to The Philadelphia Daily News, new sentencing guidelines have meant that the city no longer has to foot the bill for court-appointed defense attorneys, prosecutorial fees, lab tests, or overtime wages paid to police officers who appear in court. Additionally, says the article, legal personnel at all levels are freed up to concentrate on more serious crimes.
Thousands of cases have been diverted to through Philadelphia’s so-called Small Amount of Marijuana (SAM) program, which is designed to process marijuana users quickly through the system and leave them with a clean record. The effort might have been doomed to failure had it not received the support of law enforcement personnel, who say that efforts to take marijuana off the streets use up resources and do little to dent the supply available to users.
In the year since the policy has gone into effect, police say that they’ve noticed no discernible change in the city’s quality of life.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/09/softer-pot-laws-saved-philadelphia-2-million-in-2010/