Impending legalization is daunting says Keetch Sault Ste. Marie's top cop anticipates impaired driving by drugs "is going to be a significant challenge" in the latter half of the new year. The federal government plans to legalize marijuana on July 1. Robert Keetch, chief of Sault Ste. Marie Police Service, fears city residents will opt to toke and drive, not recognizing how their ability to drive may be impaired. "Canadians have not been getting the message when it comes to impaired driving and it remains the leading criminal cause of death in Canada," he told The Sault Star. "I believe that legalizing marijuana will only add to the numbers of drivers on our roadways whose ability to drive is impaired by either alcohol and/or drugs. I believe there are individuals who will consume legal marijuana and be under a false impression that their ability to drive is not impaired and will get behind the wheel of a vehicle and drive." [continues 538 words]
Lighting up a joint is still a popular choice for drug users even with the introduction of numerous other narcotics to Sault Ste. Marie in recent years. Marijuana use "is probably as much, or more, than it was in the past," said Staff Sgt. Jody Greco, head of Sault Ste. Marie Police Service's drug enforcement unit. Pot is no longer the major focus of his unit's work with cocaine, crack cocaine, fentanyl, heroin and methaphetamine now present in the community. [continues 248 words]
City police brass want more training, and equipment, for officers to deal with potentially hazardous narcotics. Fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamines are increasing in popularity among drug users, said Deputy Chief Sean Sparling during a Sault Ste. Marie Police Services Board meeting Tuesday at Civic Centre. They're all "very potent," especially powdered fentanyl. "It's also dangerous for the officers to handle," Sparling told The Sault Star following the meeting's open session. "We have to be very mindful of how we're seizing the stuff." [continues 501 words]
Health: Strategy Would Address Harms to Public A community group that developed a recently launched program to fight fentanyl patch abuse now wants to create a strategy to combat drug abuse for the city. Sault Ste. Marie and Area Drug Misuse Strategy Committee wants to recruit more members they feel will be essential to help decide what the document should include, said interim chair Sandy Byrne. Invitations will be made by late April with meetings of the expanded group starting in May. Start date for the drug strategy with a goal of addressing the harms to the public associated with substance use is not known. [continues 577 words]
POLICING: It is a combination of three forces Sault Ste. Marie Police Service is teaming up with two other police agencies to clamp down on the drug trade in the city and Algoma District. A constable from both Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Anishinabek Police Service are seconded to Sault Ste. Marie Joint Forces Drug Unit. Commander is Sgt. Chris Chiappetta. Two city police constables round out the force. The drug unit officially began work April 1. One of its tasks, Project Cooper, began March 14 and focused on cocaine distribution in the city and area. [continues 340 words]
LANGLEY - The plans for a medical marijuana "access point" in the Village by the Sea got a warm but wary welcome from city officials at a special council workshop this week. Lucas Jushinski, a 35-year-old Freeland resident, Iraq War veteran and combat medic, has applied for a business license with hopes to set up Island Alternative Medicine behind the All Washed-Up Laundromat on Second Street. The nonprofit would provide medical marijuana to patients who are legally authorized to use the drug in a low-key, professional manner, he said. [continues 1114 words]
LANGLEY - An Iraq War veteran and local community volunteer is making plans to start a medical marijuana business in Langley. Lucas Jushinski met with city officials last week to outline his plan for a medical marijuana "access point," which would be located in a low-key facility just outside the downtown area. Langley leaders have been cautiously supportive of the idea, and will hold a special meeting Feb. 15 to gauge public reaction to the idea. Jushinski, 35, said Monday the business would provide medical marijuana to patients who are legally authorized to use the drug. He said his business would be safe, legal and transparent. [continues 702 words]
Border Trafficking: Sen. Schumer Says Intelligence To Be Shared With Local Agencies Sen. Charles E. Schumer announced Wednesday that two federal drug intelligence officers will be stationed at the state's northern border with Canada. The Democratic senator also said he and Rep. John M. McHugh, R-Pierrepont Manor, are working "hand-in-glove" to have four northern counties added to a federal program that provides resources to disrupt drug trafficking. "We have to fight for the northern border," Mr. Schumer said. "In recent years, we've made some progress, we've had some triumphs in curbing the problem, but not enough." [continues 549 words]
Three Canadian men have pleaded guilty to a federal charge that they conspired to smuggle $40,000 in cash out of the United States at Morristown. Barry Buker, Brockville, Ontario, Donald Lauber and Louis Stephenson pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court, Syracuse, to a charge that they conspired to transport monetary instruments of more than $10,000 from a place inside the United States to a place outside the country without filing a report of international transportation of currency or monetary instruments. [continues 308 words]
Derek Pedro's first trip to Hempfest was a "nerve wracking" one. He says Ontario Provincial Police asked him and Alison Myrden, both federal medical marijuana exemptees, to get out of their truck during a spot check Wednesday. Their supply of marijuana was weighed. "It was pretty unusual," Pedro said Sunday at Hempfest. "To weigh medicine, I've never heard of that." He and Myrden waited about 45 minutes before being cleared to go. "It was nerve wracking. You're talking to somebody that's had quite a few experiences, unfortunately, with the law and medical marijuana," he said. [continues 163 words]
Two Officers Added To Street Team A beefed-up city police street team wants to hunt down drug dealers and put them behind bars. Two more constables were quietly added to the four-person unit in May. "I feel that more enforcement is necessary," said Chief Bob Davies Friday. "We have a drug problem in this town and it needs police attention. We felt that it was necessary to increase our resources for that." He predicts the move will result in "a significant rise" in drug charges in 2008. [continues 284 words]
Police seized more than 3,700 marijuana plants worth an estimated $3.7 million from three grow operations near Wawa and Sault Ste. Marie. They found slightly more than 3,600 plants at two sites about a half-kilometre apart just north of Wawa near Highway 519. The two grow-ops were "quite away" from any residential area, police said. A small grow-op between Fourth Line West and Maki Road in the Sault netted police another 100 small plants. "It is a substantial amount of marijuana that would be removed from our streets," said Const. Al Montgomery of the Sault RCMP detachment. [continues 240 words]
A Utica man characterized by prosecutors as a large-scale cocaine dealer whose network extended to Watertown was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court to life in prison without possibility of parole. Justin P. Powell, 32, originally was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2002 after being found guilty by a jury of distributing cocaine and crack cocaine, possessing cocaine and crack with the intent to distribute it and conspiring to distribute it. He and a second Utica man, Leon F. Henry, 39, had been charged April 9 2002, with having drugs in their vehicle after it was stopped on Route 12 in the town of Watertown by members of the Metro-Jefferson Drug Task Force. [continues 223 words]
22 Charged Since Crackdown Began In High Schools Sept. 19 Sault Ste. Marie police are stepping up efforts to clamp down on student drug possession in city high schools. More than 20 young adults have been charged with narcotic-related offences since the crackdown began on Sept. 19. "We're there to try and reduce drug use in and around the schools," said Staff Sgt. Romano Carlucci on Monday. The arrests have been made in areas "away from the beaten path" around the city, including bush areas near Cooper Street, Florwin Drive, North Street, Wilcox Park and a laneway off of Dennis Street. [continues 277 words]
America's war on drugs has failed, and the United States should take a new approach to illegal drugs other than throwing drug users in jail, said Roger Goodman, director of the King County Bar Association's Drug Policy Project. In a speech Thursday to the League of Women Voters of South Whidbey Island, Goodman presented the outline for a new legal framework to handle drugs. The plan focuses on getting treatment for drug users, and includes suggestions such as retail sales of marijuana at state shops and dispensaries for addicts of drugs like heroin. [continues 791 words]
Local News - Students across Algoma are being warned not to take pills offered to them after two Timmins teenagers died from suspected drug overdoes late last week. "It could have happened in our community," said Mario Turco, Algoma District School Board director of education, on Sunday. "It may still happen in our community." Daniel Drouin, 19, and Andrew Tessier, 17, are believed to have died after taking OxyContin. The pills contained time-released morphine. Timmins Police Service says the drug may have been distributed to as many as three schools in the city of 44,000 people. [continues 412 words]
COUPEVILLE -- Some people have posted messages on the Internet saying they think a statue should be put up in Stanwood to honor Paul J. Hirshbeel's honesty. But Island County deputy prosecuting attorney Michael Henegen is not impressed. He has charged Camano Island's accused naked pot farmer with one count of manufacture of marijuana. Hirshbeel has pleaded innocent. The story of Hirshbeel wandering naked around the Stanwood Cinemas caused quite a stir when it was first reported in The Herald in August. It garnered international interest as TV and radio stations around the world picked it up. Jay Leno used it in his monologue on "The Tonight Show." The Herald's Web site almost crashed when nearly a half-million people tried to read the story via the Internet. [continues 409 words]
Smoking marijuana did for Alison Myrden what pills and morphine could not - -- ease her suffering from chronic progressive multiple sclerosis and left-side trigeminal neuralgia, which causes extreme pain in her face. Myrden was one of about six federal medical marijuana exemptees to attend the three-day Hempfest 2001 that wrapped up Sunday in Ophir. "Everybody thinks we're smoking to get stoned. "It's not like that. There are no residual effects if you're smoking for a medical reason," said Myrden on Saturday afternoon. [continues 901 words]
