Port workers say new security measures announced yesterday will add to delays and bottlenecks, hindering trade.

In another year, Transport Canada will require them to submit to background checks. Trade unions have opposed the move since Ottawa first began floating the idea.

"We're all in favour of making sure that it's a secure place to work," said Tom Dufresne, president of port workers' umbrella group Canadian Maritime Workers Council.

"But we feel the regulations, as they're currently printed, miss the mark and that they fail to address severe and serious security gaps in the system."

[continues 346 words]

Pictou Landing - Cracking down on drugs is the main priority Pictou Landing residents want the RCMP to focus on in 2007.

A dozen area residents attended a town hall style meeting hosted by the Pictou County District RCMP aimed at determining the priorities of the community for its police focus next year. Like many other communities in the county, tackling the drug problem was the first word on the lips of participants.

"I want my kids to know what drugs look like," said one woman who attended the session, adding that she'd like to see the police do education for younger children as well as adults in the community.

[continues 232 words]

RCMP Synthetic Drugs Division Finds Trace Elements in Ecstasy Tablets

The times they are a changin'... and sometimes not for the better.

In this world of technology, people are more inclined to be innovative in all facets of life.

This includes the drug trade.

Const. Paul Robinson, of the synthetic drug division of the RCMP, sees things changing on a daily basis.

His expertise on synthetic drugs was presented to two groups of first responders during sessions at the Amherst Fire Department Wednesday.

[continues 386 words]

What Canada Thinks

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced his government's intention to get tough on people driving while under the influence of drugs, boosting penalties for those who fail drug tests. This would put into effect a similar law in use in Manitoba, but may also ask the courts to rely on evidence of impairment from chemical tests that have not been proven entirely reliable. Such a law's validity is open to challenge.

Harper didn't say what new tools the police will have, but they are likely to include the roadside sobriety test now in use in Manitoba when an officer suspects someone is driving under the influence of drugs. Refusing to take this test results in a charge, in a similar way that refusing a breathalyser for alcohol does. Under the Highway Traffic Act, someone who has used drugs and is impaired can see their licence suspended.

[continues 266 words]

ONE FOR the road will soon be taking on new meaning as Prime Minister Stephen Harper expands the crusade against drunk drivers to include motorists on drugs.

While booze was once targeted the most for those getting behind the wheel, curbing drug usage will soon become the subject of new federal laws aimed at making Canada's highways safer for motorists and pedestrians alike.

"Just as governments once took action on drunk driving, we must act today to make drug-impaired driving just as socially unacceptable," Mr. Harper declared last week in Kitchener, Ont., as he promised to introduce new laws to target drugged drivers. The prime minister said the bill, expected to be tabled in the Commons next week, will provide police with more tools to detect drug-impaired drivers.

[continues 186 words]

The numbers are small but substance abuse is an issue in Nova Scotia's nursing profession.

And the College of Registered Nurses of Nova Scotia, the regulating body, is so concerned with the few cases it has seen that it recently launched a resource guide on what nurses and employers should do when faced with problematic substance use in the workplace.

"It's not a big problem," college executive director Linda Hamilton said in an interview. "Nurses, just like any other member of our general society, are prone to having problems with substance use, both alcohol and drugs."

[continues 743 words]

Military Using 'Every Available Resource' To 'Stamp Out' Problem

The military has put its top crime investigators on alert after a spate of recent failed drug tests at CFB Gagetown.

Maj. Rob Bell, senior operations officer with the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, said he has met with army representatives to discuss the drug tests conducted on soldiers training to go to Afghanistan next February.

"The army and other organizations are definitely concerned about the issue, and so they've engaged us to ask what strategies we are using to try and mitigate it," Maj. Bell said Thursday. "It has definitely got the attention of the highest echelons, and we are using every resource available to try and stamp it out."

[continues 483 words]

SYDNEY - One of the community's leading organizations on drug prevention held its third public meeting Tuesday.

The Community Partnership on Drug Abuse was formed in 2004 to address the harmful impact of drug abuse in the community using interventions based on evidence and research.

Jane Lewis, chair of the partnership steering committee, said the latest meeting addressed the group's public accountability strategy.

It featured her report on progress, followed by an enforcement perspective from Chief Edgar MacLeod of the Cape Breton Regional Police Service; and treatment options from Everett Harris of Addiction Services.

[continues 130 words]

Pot Talk. Sex Talk. Readers Respond.

I loved your advice to PROP. I am a 25-year-old woman with a healthy sex life, thanks to pot. I have a hard time relaxing and being comfortable with my naked body (although I'm attractive), but smoking weed alleviates my anxiety so I can get down. I don't smoke every time I have sex, but it's usually better when I do (for example, I come every time when I smoke, and usually do not come when I don't). If someone thinks this could cause me harm, I'd like him or her to consider the harm that living life without sexual gratification can do.

[continues 1447 words]

Simple policy analysis leads, of course, to simple solutions that very rarely succeed. Scott Taylor - in between making gratuitous remarks about Canadian military officers - offers to the public just such a simplistic suggestion for redressing the poppy/narcotics problem in Afghanistan (Oct. 30 column).

He recommends that "we" should buy the poppy harvest directly from the farmers, thereby eliminating the drug trade, cutting the warlords out of the market and lessening their influence, and enriching the farmers. Everybody wins.

Unfortunately, the problem is more complex, and Mr. Taylor's "solution" would likely cause more problems and violence in the country and elsewhere. The flaw in his "free enterprise"solution and in the "eradication" solution now in place is that both are based on the erroneous notion that we are dealing with a supply problem - the production of opium made available to a market.

[continues 566 words]

Soldiers are being sent home from the task force that will head to Afghanistan in February, but the military won't say if their departure has anything to do with failed drug tests.

One source told The Chronicle Herald that soldiers have been kicked off Task Force 1-07 for failing drug tests. But military officials refused to confirm or deny the motivation behind the removals.

"As part of the normal process there are some soldiers going back to their units, either permanently or temporarily," Lt. Carole Brown of army public affairs said Tuesday.

[continues 341 words]

Poster Contest To Address Drug Abuse

AMHERST - How does drug use affect you?

Day after day, the problems surrounding drug use and abuse grow.

In an attempt to help educate the youth of Cumberland County, the Amherst Lions and Lioness Clubs are once again combining forces for the annual Amherst and Area Drug Awareness Poster contest. The contest is being run in conjunction with EastLink Television.

"Children in West Highlands Elementary, River Hebert Elementary, Spring Street Academy and Cumberland North Academy are being invited to enter posters dealing with our theme Drug Abuse Affects Everyone," King Lion Bruce MacIntyre said.

[continues 190 words]

Discovered Last Summer, It Was Kept Under Wraps Until Bust Could Be Made

CRIME - Within days of revealing that border officers foiled a major shipment of hashish being smuggled into Halifax aboard a container ship last summer, another major drug bust-one of four this year - was in the works.

"It's been a very successful few months," said Alonzo MacNeil, chief of marine operations for the Canada Border Services Agency.

Last July 21, the CBSA called a news conference to trumpet their latest success: The discovery of 4,000 one-kilogram packets of hash hidden inside bales of cotton from Pakistan and headed to Toronto.

[continues 287 words]

Four CEC Students Arrested This Week for Smoking Marijuana Before Classes

Truro - The pungent smell of marijuana smoke hangs in the air of the Colchester Legion Stadium parking lot on any given school day, say a number of observant students.

"You can stand here in the morning and smell it coming from that way and that way," 18-year-old Cobequid Educational Centre student Christina Pyke said yesterday as she glanced around the parking area.

CEC seniors Pyke and Melanie Malally said marijuana is easy to find.

[continues 326 words]

To the editor,

Alison Myrden's plea for cannabis (kaneh bosm / marijuana) to be legalized and regulated (Letter: Legion's Stance Was Incorrect, Oct. 12, 2006) is also Biblically correct since Christ God Our Father, indicates He created all the seed-bearing plants saying they are all good, on literally the very first page (see Genesis 1:11-12 and 29-30).

The only Biblical restriction placed on cannabis is that it be accepted with thankfulness (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5). It's time to stop caging humans for using what God says is good.

Stan White

Dillon, CO

[end]

With soot making a black mark on his cheek, the owner of a hip-hop clothing business that had two stores firebombed early Sunday said he's doesn't know why someone would target his stores.

"I don't really know much about it -- why it happened," Steven Douglas Skinner, the owner of Underground Jungle at 169 Main St., said outside his Dartmouth shop.

"If they (police) figure that out, they'll probably warn me."

He said he doesn't feel personally threatened or concerned for his safety.

[continues 452 words]

Cops Probe Connection To Long-Simmering Feud Between Rival Factions

CRIME - The firebombings of two businesses and a basement apartment that seriously injured two women could be linked to a long-simmering feud between rival factions connected to metro's illegal drug trade.

"We can't ignore that possibility," said Halifax Regional Police Const. Jeff Carr. "There's been a number of incidents over the summer, and we're looking to see if there are links."

Police say the weekend firebombings aren't random, but aren't saying how they're connected to the earlier incidents. They're also not saying if the Sunday firebombings of the Underground Jungle stores in Dartmouth and Halifax and Saturday's firebombing of a Woodside apartment are linked to each other.

[continues 489 words]

Interim Management Team Appointed

MACCAN - A besieged legion in rural Cumberland County has been allowed to reopen under an appointed management team.

The Maccan legion was closed and its executive disbanded just over a week ago by Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command because of its public support of the use of marijuana oil to treat numerous ailments.

The legion reopened on Friday and management team spokesperson George Theal is hoping it won't take too long before things return to normal.

"We're just so happy to get it open again. It caused quite a disruption in the community to have it closed," Theal said last night. "I was getting all kinds of phone calls from people asking when it would open again and all I could tell them was soon."

[continues 229 words]

SYDNEY - The recent deaths of three young men from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning is a valuable teaching opportunity that can be incorporated into everyday classroom instruction, says a drug educator.

"That is a very teachable moment," said Gary Roberts, director of programming for the Canadian Association for School Health, an Ottawa-based non-profit organization.

He was referring to the deaths of a trio of friends whose bodies were found in a car inside a garage in Kingston, Kings County last weekend. They had been drinking.

[continues 360 words]

Two-Day Workshop Attracts 130 Teachers

MEMBERTOU - Talking to students about addictions should come easier to 130 teachers following a two-day workshop that ended Friday.

Junior and high school students are more socially informed with today's easier access to information on sources like the Internet, said facilitator Nancy Levy. However, they often lack the level of maturity that traditionally grows at the same rate as awareness.

"We need to listen more to their experiences," said Levy. "Media is so strong. It's a different world."

[continues 195 words]