Cops in Banff say the streets are wild after 2 a.m., but this party town in the mountains has way less crime than Whistler, BC. Whistler has more violent crime, property crime and drug crime than Banff. That's according to numbers released by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics through Statistics Canada. Crime stats are calculated at a rate per 100,000 population. The 2006 statistics were calculated at 7,684 population for Banff and 9,595 population for Whistler, which doesn't account for tourists. [continues 879 words]
The young woman behind the sales counter is friendly and helpful. That is, until I drop the P-bomb. "How many bongs does the average pot smoker own?" I ask while scanning the shelves lined with glass bongs in every size and colour. Immediately adopting a poker face, she responds, "They're for tobacco - - otherwise, we'd be contravening the law." In every quadrant of our city, one can find shops where brightly coloured bongs line the shelves and a wide selection of pipes sit in glass cases. The stores have names like Grass Roots, Hemporium and Bongs and Such, just in case you still don't get the idea. [continues 853 words]
CALGARY -- City council will consider a proposal Monday to investigate a ban on the sale of crack pipes, roach clips, water bongs and other drug paraphernalia. Ald. Craig Burrows, who sits on the police commission, will urge his council colleagues to recommend bureaucrats look at ways to prohibit the sale of the materials. "We have retailers along Seventh Avenue selling drug paraphernalia, especially crack pipes," he said in an interview Thursday. "These people are [selling] to crack addicts, which is contributing to problems downtown." Several stores along the street sell blown-glass pipes, scales, knives or small glass tubes with fake roses, commonly used for smoking crack. Burrows said some front-line officers have told him they could use a few more tools to combat crime. [end]
Calgary city council will consider a proposal early next week to investigate a ban on the sale of crack pipes, roach clips, water bongs and other drug paraphernalia. Ald. Craig Burrows, who sits on the police commission, will urge aldermen at their last meeting before the civic election to recommend that city bureaucrats look at ways to prohibit the sale of the materials. "We have retailers along 7th Avenue selling drug paraphernalia, especially crack pipes," he said Thursday. "These people are (selling) to crack addicts, which is contributing to problems downtown." [continues 127 words]
RE: Banner sends the wrong message. M. Brown's letter is absurd! Our whole society's drug policies are absurd. If that poster is taken down, it will likely be replaced by a poster advertising beer, liquor, pain-relievers, or erection-helpers - or some other TV show about sex and/or violence. Drugs of all kinds are advertised on TV and all around us. All of the most popular celebrities are in rehab, and Brown is worried about some TV show about pot? Russell Barth (There are worse things on TV.) [end]
Letter writer M. Brown asks whether he is the only person who finds a banner advertising the TV show Weeds "absolutely absurd." Why? After all, nobody objects to advertisements for TV shows or movies - near or far from schools - the subjects of which are scam artists, bank robbers, rapists or murderers. Brown would be well-advised to educate himself with respect to the effects of marijuana. Sure, it does have the potential to be psychologically addicting - which puts it in the same class as television, junk food, and the desire to control the private lives of others. Don't forget, selling legal drugs - many of which are far more harmful than marijuana - is a multibillion-dollar industry. George Kosinski (You're not just blowing smoke there.) [end]
When it comes to marijuana grow operations, the job of police officers is to secure the homes, which are often booby-trapped, and sift through and collect evidence. Health inspectors who check the home after police finish are also looking for evidence and the culprit they stalk certainly sounds guilty -- stachybotrys, a type of black mould. Andrea Hohne, a health inspector, and Brian Dalshaug, program director, outlined the procedures they use to inspect a grow op for Chinook Health board of directors Tuesday. [continues 405 words]
I'm writing about Jeremy Loome's outstanding column: "Drug prohibition doesn't work." If Canada and the United States re-legalized all of our illegal drugs so that they could be sold by licensed and regulated businesses for pennies per dose it would dramatically reduce our crime rate and increase public safety. We can't eliminate drug problems but can substantially reduce the harm caused by drugs because they'd be of a known potency. What message would we send to children? It would be the same message we send to children today when we allow products such as alcohol and tobacco to be sold in licensed, regulated and taxed businesses. A free country's government cannot protect its adult citizens from themselves. Kirk Muse Mesa, Arizona (We take it you're high on the whole idea.) [end]
Recently, a banner has been put up at the Churchill LRT station of an advertisement for a show called Weeds depicting a woman holding a plate of "pot" brownies and pot leaves. Am I the only one that finds this absolutely absurd? It's a major station and there are four schools within walking distance, two of which are high schools. When did it become OK to publicly parade drug addiction and to advertise for a show about selling drugs! It needs to come down. It's sending entirely the wrong message, especially in today's world. No one should have to see that publicly paraded let alone kids and families. M. Brown (Sadly, drugs are a part of life.) [end]
Police busted two more marijuana grow operations in Red Deer on Wednesday, including one containing 566 plants worth $707,500 at a north-end residence. RCMP have raided five grow operations across the city since Aug. 15, seizing pot worth at least $2 million. There have been no arrests in the latest raid. Four people have been charged in the earlier cases. RCMP Cpl. Kathe Deheer said the busts have resulted from tips from the public and ongoing investigations. "People are coming forward and giving us more information," said Deheer. "I think when we've done this many raids, $700,000 this time, one that was $600,000, there was one over $800,000 -- that's making a substantial dent in the marijuana trade in Red Deer." Most, if not all, of the residences raided have suffered "substantial damage" due to mould and other issues associated with the growing operations, she said. [end]
More Police Patrols Downtown Would Curb Criminal Behaviour Mayor Dave Bronconnier's call for more police in the downtown area should be supported, but it is not the number of homicides in Calgary that makes his case. Rather, it is the need to establish a sufficient atmosphere of order that ordinary citizens, especially those who by their poverty and homelessness are among the city's most vulnerable, can feel safe on the streets. The best way to establish order is by interrupting criminal activity again, and again and again. More police will lead to more arrests. That will have an impact on behaviour. [continues 512 words]
Your item by Pablo Fernandez in the Aug. 27 Sun on the numbers of grow-ops in the city contained a statement attributed to Ald. Ric McIver stating that when someone smokes a joint, they are buying bullets for gangsters. Please! Let us be adults here and admit the turf these gangsters are fighting over would not exist but for ill-advised prohibition laws, which create a lucrative black market. To blame the herb cannabis for the wreckage caused by its prohibition is another case of prohibitionists' pretzel logic. Only by ignoring truth and logic can these poor, misguided souls justify their position. Pity them, for they are pitiful. Bruce Symington (Are you saying that if you make crime legal, you no longer have a crime problem?) [end]
Congratulations on publishing the thoughts of Don McMillan, (Letters, Aug. 24) who has discovered within his overactive mind the way to deal with crime: "... Give all the dopies all the dope they want," for, in his imagination, "Hopefully most of them will overdose." I'll be glued to these pages watching for other such thoughts your editors think funny. I've been an addict for 34 years and I have seen what happens when death releases addicts. Medicalization of addiction with doctor-monitored maintenance would have saved every one. They wouldn't have overdosed. It's the drug war that causes deaths with its unknown concentrations and adulterants. Yeah, overdose, funny. Most of us are people with jobs, families, all of it -- and I am tired of hearing and reading this nonsense. D.H. Michon (For another view on the issue, read on.) [end]
Usually I agree with Sun editorials, but not "Drug prohibition doesn't work" Aug. 28.). Jeremy Loome's call for legalization of hard drugs and continuation of the addict enabling program called "harm reduction" is misguided. Legalization means the government will become your heroin and cocaine dealer. It is not only an unseemly role for any government, it will inevitably corrupt government, which becomes addicted to the money to be made from the drug addicts it supplies. It will also greatly increase use of those drugs. Loome claims less than 2% of the population has a problem with hard drugs. I suggest that would become 10% or more if heroin and cocaine were freely available at your neighbourhood government cocaine store. The only way to cure a junkie is to separate him from the drugs. Jail does that, or it would if the jails were properly run. Enabling and encouraging addictive drug use is foolish and destructive. Brian Purdy (It's a controversial topic.) [end]
Welcome to the new war on drugs, same as the old war, and courtesy of Canada's federal government. Like an old dog who can't learn new tricks, the Harper government seems bent on preserving the tired, utterly disproven message that drug prohibition works. Of course, it doesn't, despite Health Minister Tony Clement's speech last week to the Canadian Medical Association. There is an overwhelming abundance of proof that prohibitions against illegal drugs simply create a massive marketplace for criminals and narco-economically driven nations, as well as some demons that are convenient at police and government budget appropriation time. [continues 245 words]
Cocaine Easier to Get Than Pizza in Booming Northern Alberta EDMONTON - Even when living in the remote work camps of Alberta, Ken was never far from his next fix. If cocaine wasn't being used inside his camp of 3,000 oil workers in the outskirts of Fort McMurray, it lingered just outside in the pockets of the drug dealers who prowled outside the gates like predators. "I could get it quicker than I could get pizza," says Ken, not his real name. [continues 1040 words]
Mental Illness Medications Go To Pot Why do we sneeze at herbal and vitamin solutions to what ails us and tend not to fear synthetic medicines, even though the latter cause more injuries every year by far? The mentally ill die an average of 25 years earlier than the rest of us, but most of us quickly dismiss this disparity as something to do with their mental illness rather something to do with, say, the medications they are being treated with-even though these medications are in many cases are known to cause, among other things, obesity and diabetes. I'm not urging those suffering from mental illnesses to go off medication that is working well, but I am advocating looking beyond developing yet another new drug to addressing this problem. [continues 544 words]
Organized Crime Groups Have Significantly Increased According To The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (Cisc) 2007 Annual Report On Organized Crime In Canada Released Last Week. In the report, the Canadian criminal intelligence community identified approximately 950 organized crime groups in 2007, compared to an estimated 800 groups in 2006. "The distribution and street level sales of illicit drugs are probably the number one organized crime activity," Rick Bohachyk, Criminal Intelligence Service of Alberta director, said. "And [that is] prevalent in all areas of the province." [continues 578 words]
Isolation, Good Pay and Boredom, Spur Addictions Even when living in the remote work camps of northern Alberta, Ken was never far from his next fix. If cocaine wasn't used inside his camp of 3,000 oil workers in the outskirts of Fort McMurray, it lingered just outside in the pockets of the drug dealers who prowled outside the gates like predators. "I could get it quicker than I could get a pizza," said Ken, not his real name. What began as a flirtation with alcohol and cocaine when he first moved out to the Fort McMurray area at age 17 slowly grew into a full-blown addiction. By his late 20s, the young welder was engaging in whirlwind cocaine binges that lasted days. [continues 1093 words]
Inside Alberta
