Feds Want Change In Marijuana Laws OTTAWA The federal government's proposed changes to the medical marijuana program would leave Canada's doctors in a lurch, dumping the responsibility for a substance with very little clinical evidence onto them, says the head of the Canadian Medical Association. Health Canada announced Sunday that it plans to change the way that people access medical marijuana, taking itself out of the production and distribution of the substance and opening up the commercial market to companies that meet "strict security requirements." [continues 321 words]
Local Trials Connected to Major Busts As Kuldeep Singh Dharni rolled his tractor-trailer up to the Ambassador Bridge customs booth, an agent's drug senses started tingling. It was 8:30 p.m., Aug. 10, 2009, and Canada Border Services Agency officers had a "look out," or tip, to focus on longhaul trucks they did not recognize. So the agent sent the cleancut Brampton trucker and his load of aluminum coils to secondary inspection - where the then 36-year-old's life unravelled in a string of legal troubles, expenses and $10 million in cocaine. He said he had no idea about the coke. A Windsor judge believed him. [continues 1136 words]
A driver who had more than a pound of marijuana in the trunk of his car was cleared of a drug trafficking charge Wednesday because of an improper police search. Before the case made it to trial, defence lawyer Evie Lipton filed a charter application arguing her client's rights had been violated after Ronald Gauthier was stopped for a licence plate sticker violation. The sticker proved to be valid. On Wednesday, in front of Ontario Court Justice Micheline Rawlins, federal prosecutor Brendan Thomas withdrew all charges against Gauthier, who was facing a possession for the purpose of trafficking charge, saying there was no reasonable prospect of conviction. [continues 319 words]
Legality of Business Questioned Windsor's new downtown business sports marijuana leaves on its sign, an oversized poster of a marijuana plant inside and a mural-sized price list for its only product - marijuana seeds. On Thursday, customers walked in, inquired about various strains and were invited to peruse a catalogue. If the store doesn't have something a customer is looking for, Danielle Capin, a 25-year-old Hamilton, Ont., woman who's running the store with her brother Joel, said she can get it within a week. [continues 375 words]
OTTAWA The same day that voters in two U.S. states approved the legalization of marijuana, the Harper government in Ottawa was bringing into force tough new mandatory penalties for pot. The states of Washington and Colorado both voted in favour of ballot-box propositions Tuesday removing criminal penalties for the possession and sale of recreational marijuana, while a similar provision in Oregon went down to defeat. Tuesday was also the day that drug measures in the Conservative government's omnibus Safe Streets and Communities Act, passed last spring, came into full force and effect. [continues 403 words]
Concerns Raised Over Privacy OTTAWA - Critics fear that new border security measures in the latest federal budget bill may force visitors to Canada to reveal whether they're a drug user or have a communicable disease such as gonorrhea. And because the measures are crammed into the sweeping bill that covers many unrelated topics, they may not get proper scrutiny, the critics say. According to the budget implementation bill tabled this week, Canada is set to adopt the Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) system by 2015 for people arriving by air from visa exempt countries, including many European nations. [continues 417 words]
I read that contraband getting into our jails and prisons has been a problem for years. Has anybody heard of drugsniffing dogs? They don't complain. They don't go on strike. They don't demand benefits and they don't call in sick. Gordon Wright, Essex [end]
Inmate was to be sentenced in stabbing An inmate's death after a suspected drug overdose at Windsor Jail has her lawyer raising questions about possible negligence and the tide of contraband narcotics flowing into the institution. Kendra Blackbird's cause of death has not been officially confirmed. But sources told The Star the inmate died after overdosing on drugs that were smuggled into the jail. Neil Rooke, Blackbird's lawyer, couldn't confirm that Tuesday. But he said illegal drugs and other contraband in the jail is an ongoing problem. [continues 897 words]
Alleges 'malicious prosecution' An elementary school teacher, arrested at work by police, has filed a $1-million malicious prosecution lawsuit along with her husband against Windsor police. All charges against Luana Zambito in relation to a 2010 drugs and firearms investigation that saw six individuals charged were eventually dropped, but the school board refused to let her return to her Grade 1 classroom teaching job at King Edward public school. Luana and husband Giuseppe Zambito were taken into custody in April 2010 in a series of police raids that resulted in the discovery of a suspected marijuana grow-up and the seizure of a loaded 12-gauge shotgun found in a master bedroom closet and a Ruger .300 hunting rifle with scope found under the bed. [continues 529 words]
OTTAWA - Due to a lack of resources, Canadian border agents have been told to stop looking for illegal drugs leaving the country and instead focus on stopping the export of illicit nuclear material and stolen cars. The directive, contained in an internal memo to Canada Border Services Agency managers that was obtained by Postmedia News, is unlikely to make officials in the U.S. and other countries very happy. But analysts say that in an age of finite resources, the agency has decided it makes more sense to target areas where it thinks it can make a difference. [continues 555 words]
Police want the public to be wary of booby traps and bad guys, but to keep an eye out for more "suspicious horticulture" after someone stumbled across a marijuana field on provincial land. "The potential is there that there could be additional growops within the city," said Sgt. Matthew D'Asti of Windsor police. "It's getting into mid-August and these plants are probably getting ready for harvest. If anybody has information about suspicious horticulture, give us a call." The drugs and guns unit started looking into the case Monday after someone spotted the plants while out for a walk on public land. Police aren't revealing the location. [continues 246 words]
Since fracturing my skull 28 years ago, life has been difficult. Doctors have tried to keep me sedated as much as possible. Years ago, while taking my eight pills a day, I thought to myself, 'I don't want to do this the rest of my life.' While researching anti-depressants, I found that most, if not all, had many terrible side effects. There have been tens of thousands of complaints and 1,600 suicides attributed to one of perhaps the most popular anti-depressant drug. [continues 131 words]
Large home empty since police raid The vacant house was a constant reminder of how a drug trafficker set up a massive marijuana grow-op right under their noses. So some residents from an upscale LaSalle neighbourhood joined forces to buy the house at 6645 St. Michaels Dr. and, on Wednesday, had it demolished. The large, brick home had been empty since police raided it in November and seized $1.3 million worth of marijuana. "Given that it was a grow-op, at the end of the day we'd be better served to have it demolished and share the lot between us," said Terry Hermiston, one of two neighbours who bought and destroyed the house. "It would have taken a ton of work to rehabilitate it; financially it seemed to make more sense to demolish." [continues 652 words]
The province's Special Investigations Unit has cleared Windsor police in the case of a house painter who suffered a broken wrist and jaw in a drug raid six years ago. In a statement released Thursday, the SIU said that "there are no reasonable grounds to charge a Windsor Police Service officer in relation to the injuries sustained by 33-year-old Jeffrey Robinson in January of 2006." The announcement comes after the failure of Robinson's $750,000 civil lawsuit against Windsor police. He'd attempted to sue eight officers and the police services board for injuries that included a fractured right wrist, a fractured jaw and abrasions on his head. [continues 472 words]
OTTAWA - Two-thirds of Canadians think the law should be changed so that people caught with small amounts of marijuana no longer face criminal penalties or fines, a new poll has found. The nationwide survey for Postmedia News and Global TV, which examined the state of Canadian values, revealed that the public is distinctly offside with the federal government on the issue. Earlier this spring, Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended a summit of leaders from the Americas, where some called for a major review of the so-called "war on drugs," and perhaps even the decriminalization of some drug use. Liberals at a policy conference this year passed a resolution endorsing the legalization of marijuana. [continues 287 words]
Five former members of an elite Toronto drug squad - including Windsor native Ned Maodus - were acquitted Wednesday by a Superior Court jury on the most serious charges they faced, including counts of conspiracy, assault, extortion and theft eight years after they were charged. But the former officers left the downtown courthouse grim-faced after being found guilty on a narrow subset of charges related to a warrantless search. The jury deliberated for nine days on the fates of Maodus, John Schertzer, Steven Correia, Joseph Miched and Raymond Pollard, who were accused of a wide-ranging "conspiracy of silence" aimed at concealing robberies and assaults on local drug dealers. [continues 320 words]
A sudden policy change by Brentwood Recovery Home - banning anybody on addiction medication such as methadone - has angered some doctors who call the move discriminatory. A letter dated May 16 and signed by Brentwood administrator Mark Lennox says that, effectively immediately, the residential substance- abuse facility is merely returning to its core beliefs of abstinence because it has more success keeping people sober that way. "We're not saying drug-replacement therapy is wrong. We're saying it's wrong for us," Brentwood interim executive director Dan Soulliere said Friday. [continues 513 words]
Smoking, drinking are also down, Health Canada finds TORONTO - Are teens becoming more abstemious? A new survey shows dropping rates of drinking, drug use and smoking among Canadian teens. For instance, the percentage of teens who have ever tried smoking cigarettes dropped to 15.5 in 2010-11, the lowest rate since monitoring of teen smoking began. Some of the declines are small, but the report - by researchers at the University of Waterloo's Propel Centre - says they are statistically significant. [continues 410 words]
Cuba Policy May Also Rile Some OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper is flying to a weekend summit in Colombia where his hard line on drugs will put him at odds with some Latin American leaders who are calling for debate over whether drug use should be decriminalized. Harper's position on Cuba also could run afoul of a possible consensus by countries in central and South America. Harper is attending the Summit of the Americas, a conference of leaders from 34 nations held every three years. [continues 397 words]
Canada, U.S. Pledge Support Canada, the United States and Mexico resolved Tuesday to boost efforts to curb the bloody drug war that has claimed the lives of 150,000 Mexicans in the first-ever trilateral meeting of North American defence ministers. Defence Minister Peter MacKay held two days of security cooperation talks in Ottawa with U.S. Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, Mexican Secretary of Defence Gen. Guillermo Galvan and Mexican Secretary of the Navy Adm. Mariano Saynez Mendoza. Mackay said the war with Mexico's drugs cartels has become a major concern for Canada. [continues 319 words]
