"Mandatory sentences breed injustice," Judge Roger Vinson told the New York Times. A Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal bench in Florida, Vinson was railing against a federal system that forced him to sentence a 27-year-old single mother to prison life without parole because her dealer ex-boyfriend had stored cocaine in her house. Note to D.C. Republicans: This would be a great time to take on the excesses of the war on drugs. The Times was writing about conservatives, including Jeb Bush and former Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson, who advocate for smarter, more humane incarceration policies under the rubric "Right on Crime." In light of the GOP's need to woo more young voters, drugwar reforms offer an ideological good - limited government - and also might be politically savvy. Think: Ron Paul and his rock star status on college campuses. Two areas cry for immediate action. One: sentencing reform. The single mother, Stephanie George, had prior drug convictions, which contributed to her draconian prison term. Even she says that she deserved to do time, but not the rest of her natural life. [continues 628 words]
Ah, the great American West, where man can generally breathe free and also inhale -- woman, too. Thank you, thank you, voters in Colorado and Washington state, for legalizing marijuana. But will Washington, D.C., leave you alone? Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the Justice Department will weigh its response to the state referenda. A new national poll finds 58 percent of Americans in PRICKLY CITY )) favor of making marijuana legal and only 39 percent against. A raft of other state laws easing the prohibition on pot and growing public contempt for the existing law should be enough to change the policy. And so should a basic sense of decency. [continues 516 words]
Last week the RCMP arrested four men with links to the White Boy Posse, a street gang based out of Edmonton. Two of those men were Lloydminster residents. The arrests came in connection to three murders and one attempted murder; one of the murders and the attempted murder took place just north of Lloydminster on Range Road 11. According to Lloydminster RCMP Cpl. Shayne Hartwell, there isn't a great deal of gang activity in Lloydminster, but the White Boy Posse are active in the Border City. [continues 1179 words]
Ah, the great American West, where man can generally breathe free and also inhale -woman, too. Thank you, thank you, voters in Colorado and Washington state, for legalizing marijuana. But will Washington, D.C., leave you alone? Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the Justice Department will weigh its response to the state referenda. A new national poll finds 58 percent of Americans in favor of making marijuana legal and only 39 percent against. A raft of other state laws easing the prohibition on pot and growing public contempt for the existing law should be enough to change the policy. And so should a basic sense of decency. [continues 517 words]
Ah, the great American West, where man can generally breathe free and also inhale -- woman, too. Thank you, thank you, voters in Colorado and Washington state, for legalizing marijuana. But will Washington, D.C., leave you alone? Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the Justice Department will weigh its response to the state referenda. A new national poll finds 58 percent of Americans in favor of making marijuana legal and only 39 percent against. A raft of other state laws easing the prohibition on pot and growing public contempt for the existing law should be enough to change the policy. And so should a basic sense of decency. [continues 515 words]
Ah, the great American West, where man can generally breathe free and also inhale - woman, too. Thank you, thank you, voters in Colorado and Washington state, for legalizing marijuana. But will Washington, D.C., leave you alone? Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the Justice Department will weigh its response to the state referenda. A new national poll finds 58 percent of Americans in favor of making marijuana legal and only 39 percent against. A raft of other state laws easing the prohibition on pot and growing public contempt for the existing law should be enough to change the policy. And so should a basic sense of decency. [continues 515 words]
Charges in High-Profile Killings Put Racist Gang Back in Spotlight In the wake of recent high-profile killings, experts look at criminal gang behaviour EDMONTON - A white supremacist gang may be linked to the random shooting of a 34-year-old Saskatoon mother and a decapitated head in a north Edmonton alley, but Mark Totten is hoping the killings don't inspire "moral panic." "The White Boy Posse is not taking over cities in western Canada," says the Ottawa-based sociologist and social worker. "We need to be concerned, but we have to be realistic. We don't need to fan the flames and create a moral panic." [continues 1279 words]
When Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed calls marijuana a "gateway" drug, he confuses the collateral damage caused by marijuana prohibition with the plant itself. Consumers who purchase legal wine or beer at a state-controlled store are not offered cocaine during the transaction. As long as drug cartels control marijuana distribution, marijuana consumers will continue to come into contact with sellers of hard drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin. Marijuana prohibition is a gateway drug policy. This major drug war failure is no reason to throw good money after bad drug policy. [continues 56 words]
NORFOLK - Over a 34-year police career, Neill Franklin was a big-time drug warrior. As an undercover narcotics agent with the Maryland State Police, he made hundreds of drug arrests. Later, as a supervisor and commander, he was indirectly responsible for thousands more. He was proud of his work. He thought he was contributing to the betterment of society. Today, he tells anyone who will listen that he was wrong. Franklin is now executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition an organization of current and former law enforcement officers that lobbies for the legalization and regulation of drugs. He will lead an audience discussion Wednesday night after the screening of the documentary film "The House I Live In" at the Naro Expanded Cinema. [continues 308 words]
Marriage equality and legal pot use took effect the same day. Yes, Washington made history last week with two new laws. Both validate libertarian get-out-of-my-private-life views. Yet I see them as very different, despite the link of timing. Seeing happy, committed couples at long last able to marry, I am proud of Washington voters for taking a great step forward in support of equal rights. To me, though - even if it makes sense for law enforcement not to focus on marijuana - legalizing pot is nothing to celebrate. I'm troubled by the message the new marijuana law sends, and not just to kids. Weed is obviously not as harmful as heroin, opioid painkillers and other drugs. But let's not pretend there's no problem here. [continues 599 words]
An Official at an Everett Drug Treatment Center and Former Pot User Believes We're Setting Ourselves Up for Big Problems. EVERETT - When he was 15, Robert McCullough knew he was addicted to marijuana. As a high school student in the 1970s, he skipped class to smoke, stole money from his parents to support his habit, and scraped his pipe for resin when he didn't have pot to get high. Today, McCullough, 43, still considers himself an addict. He attends weekly meetings and recognizes if it weren't for treatment, he would have never gotten clean. [continues 751 words]
As of Tuesday, December 11, 2012 As a former Vancouver resident, I read with interest the Dec. 9 Columbian story "Crime increases as drug use does." 100 years ago, people could legally purchase all the heroin, cocaine or morphine they wanted for pennies per dose; 100 years ago the term drug-related crime didn't exist. For the most part, drug consumption does not cause crime. Drug prohibition policies cause most of our violent and property crime. People are substantially less safe today because of our so-called war on drugs. [continues 87 words]
Recent Drug Trials Bring Up a Past Life It was Heraclitus, or perplexingly, according to some Internet sources, Pocahontas, who said you can never step into the same river twice. I am experiencing some side of this truism with all the news about the use of MDMA in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. The item has been all over: a small number of labs have been licensed to produce MDMA - 3,4-methylenedioxy-methylampheta-mine, an illegal substance much better known by its usual street name, Ecstasy - for research purposes. A handful of therapists have been granted permission to use it. The results in patients suffering from PTSD have been nothing short of miraculous. The word has appeared: cure. [continues 1083 words]
When enough states legalize marijuana, the federal government will probably do the same. This will lead to many more people using it because they didn't want to break the law. I predict that after federal law allows the recreational use of marijuana, the drug activists will begin campaigning for the legalization of cocaine. The arguments for legal marijuana will also apply to cocaine. It seems that America is heading down the path of moral degradation. William Armstrong, St. Petersburg [end]
Local Trials Connected to Major Busts As Kuldeep Singh Dharni rolled his tractor-trailer up to the Ambassador Bridge customs booth, an agent's drug senses started tingling. It was 8:30 p.m., Aug. 10, 2009, and Canada Border Services Agency officers had a "look out," or tip, to focus on longhaul trucks they did not recognize. So the agent sent the cleancut Brampton trucker and his load of aluminum coils to secondary inspection - where the then 36-year-old's life unravelled in a string of legal troubles, expenses and $10 million in cocaine. He said he had no idea about the coke. A Windsor judge believed him. [continues 1136 words]
As random drug-testing for oilsands workers is battled out in the courts, local employees are not likely to have to undergo that level of intrusion. Currently, Suncor in court to put in place randomized drug tests for its Fort McMurray operations. However, Encana, which employs a large number of people in the Peace Region, said that it does not plan to institute similar measures in this part of the world. "Encana does not have random drug testing in place and we have no current plans to implement it," wrote Doug McIntyre, a spokesman for Encana. [continues 611 words]
A Checkered History in Central America Complicates Efforts to Forge Closer Alliances. VILLA NUEVA, Guatemala - Lusvin Jerez has seen, firsthand, the way the U.S. has intervened in the security affairs of his obscure corner of Central America, 1,300 miles from the Texas border. He can't get enough of it. Jerez, 43, once sold home appliances in this violent, slum-dotted city on the outskirts of Guatemala City, but he grew tired of the extortion payments to gang members. So in January, he took a government job overseeing Villa Nueva's new citywide video security system, developed with U.S. dollars and expertise, one of myriad examples of Washington's involvement to help stabilize the violenceracked region. [continues 1134 words]
Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, whose new documentary pillories America's failed "war on drugs," is cautiously encouraged by the apparent shift in public attitude represented by Colorado and Washington voting to legalize marijuana and California opting to soften its "insane" three-strikes law. "While there is progress, it has to be seen in the context of what is needed, which is a larger revolution in the way America deals with drugs," Jarecki said in a phone interview prior to the Canadian premiere of The House I Live In this week in Toronto. [continues 629 words]
I got a whiff of the future the other day, and it smelled like fertilizer. That was the scent drifting from the doorway of a hydroponic gardening store inmy hometown of Fort Collins, Colo. I had returned there for a Thanksgiving visit just two weeks after the state became one of the first in the nation to legalize the cultivation, sale and recreational use of small amounts of marijuana. What I found was an entire community that seemed ready for the harvest. [continues 736 words]
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that drug evidence obtained in an illegal police search can nonetheless be used by the Crown to prosecute a Nova Scotia motorist. In a 5-2 decision, the majority said that a Kentville man, Brendan David Aucoin, should not have been searched while an officer was preparing a traffic ticket for him. However, they said that the need to prosecute crime outweighs the unconstitional nature of the search. The search arose after a routine traffic stop in 2008 by a police officer who suspected a licence plate infraction. Detecting alcohol on Mr. Aucoin's breath, the officer administered a roadside screening test and impounded his car. [continues 465 words]
