Hamilton's high priest of pot, who turns 75 next month, faces a possible jail sentence after being convicted of selling the holy sacrament to an undercover police officer.

A Superior Court jury deliberated eight hours Wednesday night before finding Walter Tucker and fellow minister of pot, Michael Baldasaro, 58, guilty of all five charges. They will be sentenced Jan. 24.

Tucker was convicted of three counts of trafficking in marijuana under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the total quantity amounting to a few grams and worth about $40. Baldasaro was found guilty on two counts of trafficking, involving 2.5 grams, or about $30 worth of pot.

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As a retired Michigan police officer, I am stunned that Canada is now marching down the same, failed road as the U.S. -- namely getting tough on drug prohibition laws. Increased penalties have been a spectacular failure to curb drugs in the States. We are rolling back our harsh sentences. Why oh why does Mr. Nicholson believe Canada will have a different result? Ask any economist or sociologist or police officer why this approach will fail. There is so much money to be made, there is always someone greedy or desperate enough to make and sell drugs.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Washington, D.C.

[end]

Re: "Hemp helps with green movement" Nov. 21, 2007

To the editor:

"Since hemp can grow in virtually any climate including northern and desert climates, it offers nutritional support and protein for developing countries." This is exactly why Hemp is illegal in the U.S., and suppressed in most other countries.

Hemp can be used for food, and for the fuel used to grow and transport food. In fact, the top of the plant is used for food, and the stalks are used for fuel and fibre, meaning there are actually two crops in one.

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Sovereignty Put In Danger As The Government Moves Towards North American Unionization

Why is it that the Canadian government is enforcing American border and legal policies? Is our government forfeiting our sovereignty in exchange for American ideologies regarding war and censorship?

Recent examples highlight the unconstitutional harmonization of policies that are just the tip of the iceberg of a union between the USA, Mexico and Canada known as the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

Three times in the past four months, while trying to enter Canada to attend anti-SPP and anti-war rallies, Ann Wright (a former US state department official and now an anti-war activist) has been held by border officials or denied entrance into Canada.

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WOODSTOCK - Day one of the four-day Racing Against Drugs event was a hit among participants Tuesday at Oxford Auditorium.

"It's not what I expected, it is so much more than I could imagine," said Sue Colombo, a parent-volunteer from Drumbo Public School.

"This is awesome. Every kid and every school should be here."

Her son Josh, 10, was among about 400 other grades 5 and 6 students who spent the day at 16 different pit stops learning how to say no to drugs.

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Home sweet home - well almost.

Thanks to a decision handed down by Justice Michel Shore in a Toronto federal court Monday, non-native Rick Hayes is temporarily allowed back on the Curve Lake First Nation reserve. He was banned back in October after he was convicted of drug charges on Sept. 26.

This decision allows Mr. Hayes and his common-law wife Donna Shilling, who is a native, to run their convenience store on the reserve as well as live together temporarily. However, he is not to go elsewhere on the reserve or participate in any criminal activity.

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Hallelujah!, It's about time. A good slap is what they all need.

It is beyond me how the judges in this country cannot see what is staring the rest of us Canadians in the face. The reason the Harper government wants to set mandatory minimum jail terms is because the judges have not been doing the job that Canadians expect of them.

We believe that they have shown repeatedly that they favour criminals instead of the victims. Canadians often read that what should be a 10-year term turns into a judge's five-year sentence.

[continues 86 words]

RE Russell Barth's letter bemoaning Remembrance Day poppies and the fact he can't grow poppies for medicine in his backyard (NOW, November 15-21).

Barth, you dim-witted fuck!

The poppy is a nationally recognized symbol of the many men and women who have given their lives so that ungrateful pukes like you have the freedom to voice misleading arguments. Suck my bong!

Bradley Fletcher

Toronto

[end]

The world is going to end in 2012. Oh, you didn't know? Perhaps you haven't been channeling mythological archetypes while tripping balls on tribal Mescaline in the preternatural wilderness lately.

Well, either that or you haven't yet read Daniel Pinchbeck's latest book 2012: The return of Quetzacoatl. The nature of the impending apocalypse, according to Pinchbeck, is actually metaphysical. He predicts "a sidereal movement of consciousness returning us to levels of awareness denied and repressed by the materialistic thrust of our current civilization." Far out, man.

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Re: Crime bill 'a slap in the face' to judges, Gomery says, Nov. 27.

Retired judge John Gomery describes the plan to create mandatory minimum jail terms for drug crimes as a "slap in the face" to judges. He suggests the Conservatives don't trust the judiciary to create appropriate sentences for individual cases. As much as I respect Mr. Gomery, I respectfully disagree with him.

It was noted judges are unhappy about this proposal and other legislation that suggests a failure on their part to impose proper sentences. Frankly, if the judges were doing their work properly, this wouldn't have been an idea whose time has come so that our government needed to introduce reforms.

[continues 164 words]

Re: The needle and the damage done

The cure to our oil addiction is industrial hemp, but no one wants to talk about it because it looks like marijuana. In fact, everything that we make with crude oil can be made better, cheaper and cleaner with hemp. Hemp doesn't require chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow tall and strong; it grows in even marginal soil. And while it provides food from the top of the plant, it provides fibre and fuel from the stalk.

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Non-Native Banished For Drugs May Rejoin Wife While He Appeals: Judge

A Peterborough man is back home with his wife on Curve Lake First Nation after a federal judge agreed to let him return despite being banished by the reserve's band council after a drug trafficking charge.

Rick Hayes, a Toronto-born white man, has lived on the reserve with Donna Shilling, his common-law wife, for the past four years but was banished after he pleaded guilty to possessing and trafficking marijuana to at least four reserve residents.

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There's A New Ally, And New Resolve On City Streets

It's a small park, not much more than 20 paces by 20 paces if you walk the edges.

The street it's located on is small as well; a butt-end, block-long street with a peeler bar at one end and this little city park at the other.

On this day, in the midst of the first winter storm of the season, Insp. Alain Bernard stands in the centre of the park and says he's heard stories of what it used to be like here.

[continues 730 words]

Here's an idea: why don't police start charging hotel owners and slum landlords when they knowingly allow crack houses to flourish?

The concept is fraught with legal difficulties, to be sure. And such moves must be examined from every angle. It may be that any enabling laws have far-reaching, unintended consequences. The idea raises all sorts of side questions.

And frankly, newspapers, like phone companies and Internet providers, may find themselves in rough seas on this one, particularly when it comes to the difficulties inherent in handling some classified ads.

[continues 275 words]

Crystal meth operations have yet to lay siege to this region.

A newly created task force wants to keep it that way.

The Addiction Network of the Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network wants to keep methamphetamine operations from settling in Sarnia-Lambton and the surrounding areas.

The eight-member group, representing emergency services, municipal council and health-care workers from Lambton, Chatham-Kent and Essex counties, wants to address the use of meth and other prevalent drugs in a proactive manner.

[continues 425 words]

Re: Minimum drug sentences proposed Nov. 21

Long mandatory sentences for marijuana cultivation now proposed by the Conservative government are a cruel joke. After more than three decades of investigating organized crime for many books, articles and documentary films, I have learned that the people who run organized-crime groups often use disposable people to run their marijuana grow-ops and to sell the illicit stuff on the street. The government is once again appearing to do something about the drug problem while actually doing nothing.

[continues 140 words]

Re: Minimum drug sentences proposed Nov. 21

Ottawa's proposed drug strategy, which includes mandatory minimum prison terms for drug dealers, will simply not work. It smacks of a strategy driven by hype, emotion and political expediency. It will do nothing to reduce the use of drugs in this country. Mandatory minimum prison terms will do nothing but swell Canada's burgeoning prison population.

One of the reasons the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the Western world is its draconian drug laws, which include mandatory minimum prison sentences and which prey on the socially and economically disadvantaged.

[continues 83 words]

Two weeks ago in this column, I asked whether listing agents should be required to disclose that a home was, or might have been, a marijuana grow operation, or whether they should disclose only if the seller tells them it was a grow-op?

Would the public interest be better served, if the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) amended its rules to require disclosure of all material facts about a property that the agent is or should be aware of that could affect a buyer's decision? I raised the questions after I was asked by two clients whether the house they considered buying had been a grow-op. The listing agent was silent on the issue and declined to answer questions on the subject.

[continues 476 words]

Greater Sudbury Police raided crack houses Friday as part of a six-week investigation that led to the arrest of 127 people.

Nicknamed Project Cola by police, the investigation involved 15 officers from the drug, street crime, intelligence branch, biker unit and uniform division.

At a news conference Friday afternoon, deputy police chief Frank Elsner said the investigation was launched in response to a noted increase in cocaine and, specifically, crack cocaine use.

"We're seeing an increased amount of drug activity within our community," said Elsner.

[continues 317 words]

Re: "'Pusher man' Ryan must stop peddling drugs"

To the editor:

Aleks is someone who jumps to conclusions, loves his mommy a little too much and lovingly sucks in information heard from sources that are not unbiased (i.e. the government, whose purpose at the moment regarding this matter is to stamp out marijuana use).

I say this not because I am a fiend for the "narcotic" (a term which Aleks uses incorrectly, just as the Prohibition government of the 1930s did before him), but because I observe the world around me objectively and seek to inform myself as much as possible before making a decision.

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