EDMONTON - The city backed away from banning raves Monday as the organizer of last April's big Elements Music Festival said drug problems are dropping at his company's events.

While 29 of the 16,600 people who attended Elements were treated in hospital for drug or alcohol problems, only four of 10,200 participants in two October shows went to hospital due to drugs, said Viet Nguyen of Boodang Canada.

"Things are getting better and the scene is improving," he told city council's executive committee. "We're educating people more about the dangers of drug use. We have a (nurse-run) harm-reduction booth that we set up at all our events now."

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Seriously, is a rave really any more a threat to Edmonton than, say, a Metallica concert?

OK, maybe that's a bad example. When I dropped our teenage son off at one of Metallica's Edmonton concerts at Rexall Place in August, there were a lot of fans whose strongest drugs these days were for high blood pressure, arthritis and cholesterol. If they have to have their stomachs pumped, it's for having taken two Viagra too close together.

But you know what I mean. Are today's raves really that much more dangerous than a Metallica concert would have been at the band's heyday in the 1980s?

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Province-wide consultations are expected to start in upcoming weeks to see what changes can be made on the provincial front to better fight marijuana grow operations.

Spearheaded by Alberta Solicitor General Jonathan Denis, consultations will be not only with police but communities and others impacted by illegal grow operations.

Staff Sgt. Tom Hanson, who worked with the Green Team in recent years, said there are a number of rules which could be introduced by the province to help better deal with the scourge.

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Council to Look at Proposals on Licensing, Fines

Problems with drug abuse were so bad at last spring's huge Elements Music Festival doctors ran out of Valium to deal with it, says a police report released Thursday.

Of 16,566 people who attended the electronic music event April 27-28 in Northlands Expo Centre, 41 were treated by Alberta Health Services, wrote Sgt. Nicole Chapdelaine, head of the Public Safety Compliance Team.

"If AHS did not plan as they did, the likelihood of someone dying at the event from a drug overdose would have been extremely high, if not imminent," her report says.

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Re: "Suncor union wins round in battle over drug tests; Appeal court upholds injunction that temporarily halts random checks," the Journal, Oct. 24.

I wish Suncor success in its battle to ensure a safe working environment for employees.

While the union talks about employee rights, how about the rights of fellow workers whose lives are at risk when working with someone under the influence of drugs or alcohol?

Sheila Pierce, Springbrook

[end]

The exit of Oxycontin has left a chasm in Canada's underground drug economy and left addicts scrambling to fill the void, according to one of the nation's leading addictions experts.

Here on the prairies, a number of them are turning to heroin.

"A lot of my patients are reporting that," said Dr. Raju Hajela, the former president of the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine, who practises in southeast Calgary.

Abuse of opioids - opium-like drugs - exploded in Canada when Oxycontin hit and Hajela said governments and even many in the medical community "missed the boat" thinking addicts would seek treatment when Purdue Pharma stopped manufacturing the drug earlier this year.

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Suncor Energy has lost another legal round in its plan to randomly test thousands of unionized oilsands workers in Alberta for drugs and alcohol.

But the court battle pitting work-site safety against individual privacy rights isn't over.

Earlier this month, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union Local 707 won an injunction against a testing policy that was implemented during the summer. A judge ordered the matter be settled through arbitration.

An Alberta Court of Appeal judge ruled Tuesday against a Suncor application for a stay of the injunction. Suncor said it will continue the fight to keep its work sites safe.

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Appeal Court Upholds Injunction That Temporarily Halts Random Checks

The Court of Appeal of Alberta has upheld a lower court injunction that temporarily prevents random drug and alcohol testing of Suncor Energy employees while the union continues its legal fight against the program.

The ruling, released Tuesday morning, means 3,400 oilsands workers represented by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada Local 707 will not be subject to random drug tests as their union and Suncor prepare for a full appeal of the injunction on Nov. 28.

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Injunction Puts Lives at Risk, Company Says

Each day that a court order prevents random drug and alcohol testing at Suncor Energy's oilsands operations increases the risk of injuries and accidents, a lawyer for the company told the Alberta Court of Appeal Wednesday.

The energy company went to court to request a stay in a previous order that temporarily stopped their new drug-testing program before it began. The Court of Queen's Bench issued an injunction Friday that stopped random drug and alcohol testing among 3,400 workers represented by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada Local 707.

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Walk past a residence tower on a Friday or Saturday night and you might think you're walking by a Snoop Dogg concert. Marijuana gets smoked on campus, there's no doubt about it. For the vast majority of users, they're probably just warming up for some Mario Kart on N64 but for others, marijuana is more than just a recreational drug.

Adam, who preferred to not use his last name, is a former SAIT student and medical marijuana user. He smokes marijuana to treat an extremely painful medical condition that can leave him completely immobile. It took years of pills, injections and alternative therapy before he came upon marijuana as a viable treatment option. Since then he said he's never passed on a puff. The improved mobility and diminished pain was enough to make him a believer in the power of medical marijuana.

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Workers at Suncor's Fort McMurray operation got a court injunction to keep the company from starting a random drug testing operation Monday.

Court of Queens Bench Justice Eric Macklin granted the temporary injunction, saying random drug testing can be an invasion of privacy that could cause irreparable harm to innocent employees.

The judge heard union affidavits from two female workers who had experienced drug testing.

A previous arbitration report said the company's drug testing policy was "overbroad," Macklin said.

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A pilot program that would allow random drug and alcohol testing for oilsands workers has angered the union representing more than 3,000 Suncor employees, claiming the tests violate the rights and dignity of workers. However, supporters of the program argue that random testing is an effective tool to prevent substance abuse in the workplace. Today staff couldn't agree on a single stance, so we present them both for readers to decide.

Safety and trust trump undue entitlement

Imagine an airline pilot, ready to take the captain's chair of a Boeing 747, refusing to submit to a simple sobriety test. Or an on-duty RCMP officer responding to the same request with the statement, "That would be an invasion of my privacy." Or perhaps a medical surgeon, before heading to the operating room, saying he will not provide a clean sample of his own.

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Taxpayers must be wondering how long the list of proponents will have to grow before Ottawa moves to decriminalize pot use.

Last week, the Union of B.C. Municipalities became the latest group to recognize the futility of Canada's existing marijuana laws, with mayors voting at their convention to lobby Ottawa on the subject.

Specifically, their resolution called on governments to "decriminalize marijuana, and research the regulation and taxation of marijuana."

The voters were mayors and councillors: politicians at the level of government closest to the community, folks who understand how much time and money is being wasted on a useless pursuit.

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The case of a Lethbridge man whose daisies were mistaken for dope calls into question the way the federal government doles out the drug to Albertans, according to a medical marijuana advocate.

Tamara Cartwright-Poulits holds a medical marijuana licence and is president of Southern Alberta Cannabis Club and the newly formed Central Alberta Cannabis Club, which together represent about 120 marijuana users in the province. If Alberta doctors were more willing to approve medical marijuana licences for qualifying patients, she believes, cases like Ryan Rockman's wouldn't tie up police's time.

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Please don't smoke the daisies.

It turns out that more than 1,600 suspected marijuana plants that a special police squad ripped out of a yard in Lethbridge, Alta. this summer are a species of daisy.

The bust, which was announced with fanfare in July, has homeowner Ryan Thomas Rockman scratching his head over the confusion. Just the same he's happy the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT) has dropped the charge of producing a controlled substance.

"It made me look like a villain and it made them look silly," Rockman told the Lethbridge Herald, insisting all 1,624 plants seized were Montauk daisies - a fall-blooming perennial he's been growing for a decade.

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Local experts have tried and failed to identify the plants police mistakenly seized from an accused drug trafficker's backyard.

Back in July, police took 1,624 plants from Ryan Thomas Rockman's garden in the 900 block of 13 Street North, declared the bust the largest-ever take down of an outdoor grow operation in Lethbridge's history, and laid five criminal charges against the 41-year-old grandfather. Police withdrew one count of producing a controlled substance earlier this week after lab results proved the plants weren't marijuana. But the tests didn't reveal exactly what the plants are.

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It's blooming embarrassing, is what it is.

The best part: police still won't admit the plants they seized in what was supposedly the biggest outdoor marijuana bust in Lethbridge history are plain old flowers - daisies, to be precise.

All police will concede at this point is the 1,624 plants torn from a suburban Lethbridge garden on July 30 isn't marijuana, as first claimed after a phalanx of police marched in and starting plucking.

"This is a significant bust, given the size of this operation," is how a senior officer put it at the time, while proudly displaying garbage bags full of the dastardly daises.

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In July, police boasted they'd taken down the largest ever outdoor marijuana grow operation Lethbridge had ever seen.

But now that lab results have come back on the plants they seized, it turns out the only weed they found in Ryan Rockman's garden were the ones that plague your everyday gardener.

The Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team confirms it has dropped a charge of marijuana production against Rockman after its officers pulled out 1,624 plants from his garden.

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Samples of the plants police had sent to a lab in B.C. tested negative for marijuana, so police have dropped the most serious charge against him: producing a controlled substance, although 41-year-old Rockman still faces charges of possession for the purpose of trafficking, possession of a controlled substance, and possessing proceeds of crime in relation to the 697 grams of dried marijuana, 6.3 grams of cannabis resin and some cash that police also allegedly seized during the investigation.

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The Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT's) Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU-Lethbridge), an integrated team of Lethbridge Regional Police Service and RCMP members, was called in to assist with the investigation. Police seized what they believed to be 1,624 marijuana plants, along with 697.86 grams of dried cannabis marihuana, 6.3 grams of cannabis resin, and a small amount of cash.

Police sent samples of the seized materials for testing. Results indicated the seized plants were not marijuana but confirmed the other items seized were dried cannabis marihuana and cannabis resin.

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