• Announcements - Hot Off The 'Net

    Prohibition Documentary

    Premieres October 2nd, 3rd & 4th, 2011 at 8 PM on PBS

    CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS

    PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.

    Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse. But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    marijuana-arrests.com

    An Online Library About Marijuana Possession Arrests, Race And Police Policy In New York City And Beyond

    U.S. government studies consistently find that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than young blacks or Latinos. Yet, in large cities and counties throughout the United States, young blacks and Latinos are arrested and jailed for marijuana possession at much higher rates than young whites.

    In New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, police arrest blacks for marijuana possession at seven times the rate of whites. Usually, the people arrested were not smoking in public. Police typically found the small amount of marijuana when they stopped, frisked, and searched the young people, often in their own neighborhoods.

    Marijuana-Arrests.com is an on line library of materials about the huge numbers of racially-biased marijuana possession arrests, their consequences, and the law enforcement policies and operations which produce them.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Court decision on Insite safe-injection project coming Friday

    For Donovan Mahoney, the Insite facility in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside was more than just a safe place to turn to for drugs.

    Since 2004, he’s checked in at the clinic about 1,000 times for heroine, cocaine and morphine injections but he credits the controversial site for helping him get to treatment when he was ready and for housing him while he works on transitioning from life on the street.

    He was sitting in a Maple Ridge, B.C., jail for petty crime when he called on the people he’d met at Insite for help.

    “By then, I kind of burnt a lot of bridges so the people I had to turn to when I was in jail (were) these guys,” he said.

    “They went all the way out to Maple Ridge and drove me out to Miracle Valley (Treatment Centre). It was my first real crack at treatment.”

    On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada will announce its landmark decision on whether North America’s first supervised injection site for addicts, will be allowed to operate without a federal government legal exemption from drug laws.

    Should the Supreme Court not rule in Insite’s favour, the organization would need to continue to rely on a federal government exemption to remain open.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Drugs, Risk and the Myth of the ‘Evil’ Addict

    By MAIA SZALAVITZ

    My column on making Naloxone available over-the-counter to reverse overdoses drew many plaudits and two main strands of criticism. One group argued that addicts aren’t worth saving and we need to cut the drug supply; the other said that Naloxone, also known by its brand name, Narcan, is too risky to be available without a prescription.

    Let me address the second argument first. More than 50,000 Naloxone kits have already been distributed to drug users, pain patients and their loved ones in the United States and 10,000 successful overdose reversals have been reported.

    The health advocacy group Public Citizen has asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize over-the-counter sales and has received a response that details the agency’s requirements for reclassification. A meeting on the topic of how best to expand access is expected to be held by the agency next May: according to its letter, the F.D.A. would probably want expensive clinical trials before granting over-the-counter status. It is not clear how that would be funded or whether it would allow alternative approaches

  • Letter of the Week

    Crime Program A Waste

    Re: CRIME program to continue for now, Tuesday, Aug.  9 Tribune.

    “CRIME-subsidizing program to continue for now” would be a more accurate headline.

    The people most pleased about this “eradication” policy are the 90-95 per cent of growers who will never be caught.

    This colossal waste of time and money is not only failing to fix things, it is, in fact, outrageously counterproductive.

    If the police busted twice as many grow ops this year as last year, they would still only get about 20 per cent of them.  One fifth.  Probably less.  And every time they bust one grow op — indoor, outdoor, small or big — all they do is make the ones they don’t catch that much more valuable.

    Not only is the illegality of pot the very thing that makes growing it so lucrative, the police are actually subsidizing the entire industry by busting only a minority of the growers.

    The whole thing is a scam and the police know it, too.

    They continue this game because regular crime keeps going down every year and they need to justify their continued existence.

    Funny how they complain about a “lack of resources” when women and kids go missing, but they always have a dozen officers to pose for the cameras with pot plants in their hands.

    They also like to tell the public that this is somehow interfering with organized crime or preventing pot from reaching people’s kids, but informed people like me know that the exact opposite is true.

    Every year the cops bust more and more people and, every year, organized criminals grow stronger and pot becomes more widely available.

    Is this the Canada you want to live in? A country where government, cops, and the media lie to the public and help gangsters and deprive people of valuable medicine and billions in tax revenue in the process?

    Because that is the Canada you live in right now.

    Russell Barth

    Educators For Sensible Drug Policy

    federally licensed medical marijuana user,

    Nepean, Ont.

     

    Pubdate: Tue, 16 Aug 2011
    Source: Williams Lake Tribune, The (CN BC)
    Copyright: 2011 Williams Lake Tribune
    Contact: [email protected]
    Website: http://www.wltribune.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1226
    Author: Russell Barth, Educators For Sensible Drug Policy, federally licensed medical marijuana user.
    Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n517/a06.html?1190

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    War on Terror

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 9-19-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 9-19-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3554

    Question of the Week: Are the “War on Drugs” and “War on Terror” the same?

    An article in the University of Pittsburgh Law Review states,

    “Well before the twenty-first century, the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the resulting War on Terror, the country and Supreme Court already had been fighting another war for thirty years—the so-called “War on Drugs”—and it was every bit as devastating to civil liberties, although slower and more methodical, than our new “War on Terror” promises to be.”

    The link between the two is described rhetorically by the Transform Drug Policy Foundation,

    “Like the war on terror, the war on drugs is framed as a response to an exceptional, existential threat to our health, our security, and indeed the very fabric of society. …. The “Addiction to narcotic drugs” is portrayed as an “evil” the international community has a moral duty to “combat” because it is a “danger of incalculable gravity” that warrants a series of (otherwise publicly unacceptable) extraordinary measures.”

    The results of this rhetoric were outlined in a Drexel Law Review article concerning the U.S. Patriot Act,

    “the Passage of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act [shortly after 9/11] substantially increased the authority of the government in surveillance, border security, terrorism policing, money laundering policing, and intelligence gathering.”

    The University of Pittsburgh Law Review concludes,

    “methodically and largely unnoticed in the name of the War on Drugs, and now more rapidly and apparent in the War on Terrorism, our free, open society is casually losing its grip.”

    These facts and others like them can be found on the Drugs and Terrorism subchapter of the Drug War Facts Interdiction chapter at www.drugwarfacts.org

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Mycoherbicides

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 9-18-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 9-18-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3552

    Question of the Week: What are mycoherbicides?

    According to the 2011 Global Commission on Drug Policies report,

    “Biological methods of eradication, known as mycoherbicides, have been researched for coca and opium poppy …”

    A 2007 Drug Policy Alliance report overviewed two kinds of mycoherbicides, stating,

    “One of these is Fusarium oxysporum and the other is Pleospora papaveracea. Both are toxic molds that attack their targets through the secretion of cell-dissolving chemicals called mycotoxins,”

    According to the Sunshine Project mycotoxins can

    “have serious impact on human and animal health.”

    The Project defines Fusarium oxysporum as a,

    “well-known plant pathogen causing damage and large losses in food and industrial crops worldwide. Researchers of the US Department of Agriculture have developed highly virulent strains that attack cannabis and coca plants, the source of cocaine.”

    The Sunshine Project defines Pleospora papaveracea as,

    “a fungal pathogen that attacks opium poppy. Candidate strains for use in crop eradication were … part of the [former] Soviet Union’s offensive biological weapons program.”

    A United Nations Special Rapporteur raised concerns about the use of mycoherbacides, citing Colombia’s Office of the Ombudsman, which is,

    “gathering information on the serious risks to life, human health and the environment that could result from experimentation with … the Fusarium oxysporum fungus in the open in the Colombian Amazon, one of the richest habitats in terms of biodiversity in the world.”

    The Drug Policy Alliance echoed these concerns, noting that,

    “While mycoherbicides contain chemical toxins, they are actually covered under the [United Nations] Biological Weapons Convention …. Given that mycoherbicides are biological agents it has been argued that their use, especially in foreign countries, would be illegal under [this United Nations treaty].”

    These facts and others like them can be found on the Mycoherbacides subchapter of the Environment Chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

  • Letter of the Week

    Pot Persecution Unjust

    Dear Editor,

    I can’t be the only non-user who is fed up with the persecution of medical marijuana outlets by police [Clients fume over marijuana loss, Aug.  30, Langley Advance].

    The clients of these medical distribution centres come with a prescription referred by a doctor.  Therefore, the police are subordinating a legal medical health concern to an arcane statute that continues to rob the B.C.  coffers of literally billions of dollars in untaxed revenue.

    The ridiculous, outmoded fear behind it all was recently underscored in an advertisement titled: “Get Paid to Grow Marijuana” about a UBC seminar, with topics such as complying with laws and regulations for medical use.

    Police and politicians should not get away with using the defence that growers are liable to break-ins, etc., because that argument could be made to shut down pharmacies or even banks, who also occasionally are robbed for their wares.

    In the land of uncommon sense, many peaceable, noncriminal, ordinary citizens who enjoy an occasional smoke with friends or know of it and do not disapprove are motionless, while the best possible usage of this natural herb is disallowed for those who need it most.

    This is unacceptable.

    In the future, any political party or politician who gets my vote will have to speak to this untenable situation.

    Eli Bryan Nelson

    Langley

     

    Pubdate: Thu, 01 Sep 2011
    Source: Langley Advance (CN BC)
    Copyright: 2011 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc.
    Contact: [email protected]
    Website: http://www.langleyadvance.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1248
    Author: Eli Bryan Nelson, Langley Advance

  • Letter of the Week

    Insite Insight

    Re: “No fan of Insite,” Letter, Sept.  8.

    MP Joy Smith states there are “no peer-reviewed, scientifically sound studies that support claims that safe injection sites save lives and have significant success in helping their clients to become drug free.”

    This is either misinformed or intentionally misleading.

    Since 2003, Insite, Vancouver’s supervised injection site, has been subject to more than 30 peer-reviewed studies which found a reduction in public injecting, lower levels of HIV risk behaviours ( e.g., syringe sharing ), an increase in uptake of addiction treatment among the facility’s clients, and a reduction in overdose deaths.

    These findings have been published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal and The Lancet.

    It is indisputable that Insite saves lives.  The fact that the majority of injections occur away from the facility merely affirms the need for an expansion of its services.

    While greater investment in prevention and treatment is crucial, abandoning proven harm reduction measures will lead to a mounting HIV and hepatitis C epidemic and tragic deaths among our most vulnerable populations.  This would certainly not be “doing better” for people with addictions.

    Sandra Ka Hon Chu,

    Toronto

     

    Pubdate: Fri, 09 Sep 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
    Author: Sandra Ka Hon Chu
    Note: Sandra Ka Hon Chu is senior policy analyst for the Canadian HIV/AIDS
    Legal Network.