The No Fixed Address Outreach Van provides nursing, warm clothing and harm-reduction supplies, such as clean needles and crack pipes, to Whitehorse's down-and-out.

It also offers food.

On any given night, the van's workers may offer soup and sandwiches to about 70 residents.

They often run out, says Patricia Bacon, executive director for Blood Ties Four Directions, which helps run the van.

Bacon addressed a touring parliamentary committee in Whitehorse on Tuesday. The committee, led by Tony Martin, the NDP's MP for Sault Ste. Marie, has spent more than a year listening to the thoughts of frontline workers on how the federal government can better fight poverty.

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Statistics released this week by the Whitehorse RCMP show that police officers in the capital are busier this year than they were in 2008.

The quarterly report is regularly sent to city council and the Kwanlin Dun First Nation chief and council, and has been released (in part) to the media for the first time this year.

It's an effort to show what the detachment members are doing, and to keep the public abreast of policing priorities, Sgt. Don Rogers said about releasing the numbers.

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Gabor Mate Doesn't Believe In Hope.

After years working with drug addicts on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the Hungarian doctor doesn't have time or patience for it.

"Hope is all about the future; hope is all about getting away from the present," said Mate from Vancouver early Thursday morning.

"It's not a question of maintaining hope; it's a question of seeing the real possibility of doing things right now."

And Mate is doing a lot.

He was rushing to a conference he was hosting on addictions this week, and it was hard to keep Mate on the phone. The service was patchy, and he kept cutting out.

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RCMP officers made several drug-related stings in Inuvik and Fort McPherson last week after encountering a suspicious driver on the Robert Campbell Highway.

An Edmonton man was arrested, a lucrative amount of cocaine and marijuana was seized, and an SUV, modified to hide drugs, was taken in by police in three separate takedowns over the weekend. And it all started with a nervous driver outside of Faro.

The driver, who was speeding along the highway Thursday, was travelling north when Yukon RCMP pulled him over.

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Get caught passing a joint to a 17-year-old and you'll spend two years in the slammer, says a federal bill only weeks from becoming law.

Bill C-15, introduced last March in the House of Commons, calls for mandatory minimum sentencing on drug crimes, removing a judge's power of discretion.

"It absolutely will not and cannot achieve its goals, and everyone knows that," said Kirk Tousaw, executive director of the Vancouver-based Beyond Prohibition foundation.

"Drug consumption and drug-related crime seem to be unaffected, in any measurable way, by severe (mandatory minimum sentencing)," reads a 2002 report commissioned by the Canadian Department of Justice.

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Subject: Re: Controversial legal hallucinogen 'safe:'

I agree with Porter Creek Secondary drug awareness co-ordinator Doug Green that anything that causes people to hallucinate should be controlled, including solvents. Health Canada should certainly enforce quality control, labeling and age restrictions.

However, adding the hallucinogenic herb Salvia divonorum to the so-called Controlled Drugs and Substances Act would make matters much worse.

As counterintuitive as it seems, criminal prohibition is at the bottom, not the top, of the regulatory scale. We have more control over cat food than we do over cannabis and cocaine.

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Re Controversial legal hallucinogen 'safe:'

Cops want salvia criminalized because they want to have control over what the public gets to do for fun.

Most cops love prohibition because it ensures their powers of coercion and ever-expanding budgets, because the War On Certain Drugs was never meant to be won, it was meant to be continuous.

Health Canada, the puppet of Big Pharma, would probably like to criminalize it because they want to criminalize everything from Vitamin C to dandelions (Google "Codex Alimentarius"). They would rather have your kids on Ritalin than some weird Mexican herb, because Ritalin can't be grown in a backyard or window box.

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Fourteen-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Michael Phelps is back in the news-not for the breaststroke, but a pot-toke.

Over the weekend a British tabloid published a photo of Phelps appearing to take a toke off a waterpipe filled with marijuana smoke. The photo was purportedly taken at a University of South Carolina house party in November, three months after his eight-gold performance at the Beijing Olympics.

In a statement released by his agent, the 23-year-old Phelps apologized and said he "acted in a youthful and inappropriate way."

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Salvia divonorum, commonly known as salvia, thanks to its powerful psychedelic punch and its availability in legitimate retailers, has made a huge jump into Canada's recreational drug scene, particularly among youth.

"It's a very intense hallucinogenic experience that is thankfully short-lived-usually 15 minutes, some people report five minutes and the longest would be half an hour," said Wende Wood, a psychiatric pharmacist with the Toronto-based Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Native to Mexico, the drug was originally used by the Mazatec culture for spiritual journeys.

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As graduation day closes in, Riley Tobin thinks back to those first impressionable days of high school.

"When I was going into Grade 8, there were a few positive role models that were in Grade 12," said the 17-year-old Tobin who is headed to the University of Lethbridge this fall.

"I liked being around them and I want to give that back to the Grade 8s this year if I can."

Tobin won't be leaving Porter Creek Secondary School the same way he found it. He sits on the school's drug-sniffing dog and Be the Change committees, groups that have spurred a new atmosphere in the school, he said.

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Illicit drugs will continue flowing into the Yukon no matter how many local drug dealers law enforcement rounds up, said the RCMP.

In December, police arrested seven suspected cocaine dealers in Operation Miner. The immediate effect on the downtown Whitehorse drug scene was significant, they say. But as long as national and international drug organizations keep growing and local addictions persist, illicit drugs won't be rooted out.

"(Operation Miner) was not an operation directed at the upper levels of distribution," said Sergeant Blake Wawryk, the director of the RCMP's drug division in the Yukon.

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The Yukon's RCMP and the territory's top doctor are warning residents to be aware that potentially deadly cocaine, contaminated with animal antibiotics, is making its way across the country.

Some could well reach the Yukon, they believe.

According to officials, cocaine cut with the hog de-worming drug levamisole surfaced in British Columbia, Alberta and, most recently, the Northwest Territories.

Those ingesting levamisole may experience fever or chills, swollen glands, sores around the mouth and anus, pneumonia, thrush and potentially fatal blood poisoning.

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Re: Cannabis Crusader Calls On Whitehorse:

The wackos in pot prohibition are the cretins who support a marijuana policy based on utter nonsense.

".persons using this narcotic smoke the dry leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility.

"Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to pain. While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any forms of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility."

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Re: Cannabis Crusader Calls On Whitehorse (the News, August 29):

Your item on Marc Emery's visit to Yukon was entertaining and enlightening for the most part, but most readers would be left feeling a little confused as to the truth regarding cannabis (marijuana, pot, reefer, etc.) because both sides made claims.

Emery claimed that pot does not lead to worse driving, that it stimulates the creation of brain cells, ends morning sickness and does not cause lung cancer.

The local medical officer, Brendan Handley, refuted those assertions. Neither side cited any science supporting their positions, and therein lies the source of confusion.

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In regards to the comment by Brendan Hanley, Yukon's medical health officer, that it is "impossible to grow new brain cells," he might wish to read up on the research.

A widely reported study done at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon showed that cannabinoids spurred the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus.

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in November 2005.

The lead researcher concluded that "marijuana appears to be the only illicit drug whose capacity to produce new neurons is correlated with its anti-anxiety and anti-depressant effects."

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Marc Emery smokes a lot of pot.

And he has a lot of beliefs that some might consider. wacky.

You're a safer driver if you're high.

Smoking pot during pregnancy cures morning sickness and makes your children more creative.

Pot smokers will never get lung cancer.

And marijuana helps grow new brain cells.

The Prince of Pot admits these claims sound a little radical.

"But sometimes the truth appears radical," said Emery.

"It does make for better drivers and healthier children."

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Marijuana users have contributed more beauty and more richness to the world than anyone else, yet they are hunted down like dogs.

That was the message Vancouver's "Prince of Pot", a.k.a. Marc Emery, had for his rapt audience at Doc's Cafe and Bakery on Thursday evening.

Following introductions from event organizer Chris Gilberds and Dana Larsen, the NDP candidate for Vancouver West, Emery spoke for more than two hours about the benefits of marijuana and the harm inflicted on society by the war on drugs.

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The territory needs a registry of all properties identified as former marijuana grow-ops, according to Arthur Mitchell, leader of the Yukon Liberal Party.

"Grow-ops and illegal drug operations can produce property defects and health hazards that are major concerns for the public,"Mitchell said this week.

"And potential purchasers need a central place to check before buying."

Damage to the structural integrity of a property and severe mold infestations can depend on the size of an operation and how long a place has been used to grow marijuana.

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I would like to express my heartfelt sympathies to all the families affected by the behaviour and actions of people at 810 Wheeler Street.

It is my hope that the demolition of this property will help bring some closure to a very sad story.

I would also like people to know that my mother loved all her children, unfortunately to the point of endangerment.

I know in her heart she thought she was doing the right thing; she tried to be supportive of better behaviour, she tried to maintain some semblance of decency and order.

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Known as a local crack house, the building at 810 Wheeler St. saw its end early today as a demolition crew reduced it to rubble.

Its Edmonton owner (who inherited the property) issued a statement addressing area residents.

"I would like to express my heartfelt sympathies to all the families affected by the behaviour and actions of people at 810 Wheeler Street," reads the one-page written statement by Natalie Stinson, who was the executrix of her mother's will.

"It is my hope that the demolition of this property will help bring some closure to a very sad story."

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