I too share the outrage of Health Minister Rona Ambrose concerning the Supreme Court allowing marijuana derivatives to be used for medical purposes. This decision was made to accommodate children being prescribed medical marijuana. In my way of thinking, if these prepubescent potheads can't spark up a doobie like the rest of the potheads, they have no right to be using it in the first place. And everyone seems to be ignoring a glaring side effect of this marijuana use by these children. I don't know which U.S. president funded it, but a scientific paper that was released in the late '60s outlined a serious consequence of marijuana use. [continues 270 words]
Port Coquitlam is on the verge of getting a first in the Tri-Cities. On Monday, city council passed the third reading and all but rubber stamped an application to build a medical marijuana production facility at 1425 Kebet Way. Remedi Pharmaceutical wants to convert a roughly 8,000 square-foot portion of the two-acre warehouse into a self-contained medical marijuana production facility that would produce 2,000 kilograms of product annually. While medical pot dispensaries remain illegal in the eyes of the federal government and a legal conundrum for municipalities, Health Canada does allow for production facilities like the one approved in PoCo to exist. The company still needs approval from Health Canada before its facility can become a reality. [continues 214 words]
Mom Starts First Canadian Chapter of Support Group for Those Grieving a Death Due to Drugs Jennifer Woodside has already been through the worst day of her life. It was April 4, 2014, when her 21-year-old son Dylan went to sleep and never woke up. "Nothing can be worse than that day I went through," Woodside said. Dylan, a young art student, had developed a taste for ketamine, a drug somewhat popular on the club scene. He was on and off it for about eight months and managed to get through detox, but as Woodside tells it, he did it one more time. This time, he took oxycodone laced with fentanyl, an additive responsible for the rash of overdoses in Vancouver's heroin-using community last October. [continues 398 words]
Outside of the birds and bees, it could be the most important conversation parents have with their kids. The SHARE Family & Community Services Society will host an information session for parents and caregivers on Monday, March 30 to examine how to talk to kids about drug and alcohol use. The event aims to help adults prepare for the discussion itself, while offering options to make that talk a productive one. "We don't promote any particular one right answer and we're not an abstinence-based program," said Lisa Ackerman, SHARE's supervisor of youth substance use services. "We look at a whole spectrum of what's going to be best for different people and how you decide that." [continues 344 words]
In the next few weeks, the group hoping to open the first medical marijuana dispensary in Port Moody will learn the fate of its plan. Representatives of CannaLifeMD were in front of council Tuesday formally requesting a bylaw amendment that would allow them to open what they call a "medical wellness centre" at 3131 St. Johns St. The company originally appeared in front of council last fall, but didn't make a specific request at that time. Council asked staff to come back with recommendations for an upcoming meeting on how to proceed with the issue. [continues 394 words]
Anyone who's battled a drug addiction, or knows someone who has, understands just how hard it can be to beat the disease. And unfortunately, losing the battle often means ending up in a body bag. Case in point: just this week, the BC Coroners Service issued a warning to drug users in the Fraser Health region, including the Tri-Cities, to be careful when using opiates like heroin and oxycodone. The coroners service believes the extremely dangerous drug fentanyl is behind the overdose deaths of 13 people in the region so far this year, including two in Coquitlam. [continues 191 words]
PoCo leads charge in shutting down grow-ops Come April 1, if you live in PoCo and once had a legal license to grow medicinal pot, when the city comes knocking there will be no fooling. As new federal laws regarding the production of medicinal marijuana take affect next month, the city's Public Safety Inspection (PSI) Team, which deals with grow-op enforcement for the municipality, will start the process of identifying and shutting down home-based grow-ops. PoCo Mayor Greg Moore, who noted there could be hundreds of once-legal medicinal grow-ops in the community, said the city is shutting down the grow-ops out of concern for the neighbourhoods in which they exist. [continues 607 words]
City Puts Medical Marijuana Facility On Notice The City of Coquitlam is trying to shut down a grow-op in Maillardville whose four tenants were licensed by Health Canada to grow medical marijuana for personal use, but which never had a business licence from the city allowing it to operate. The tenants are represented by high-profile lawyer John Conroy, who has provided legal services to "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery, as well as the Insite supervised injection site in Vancouver, VANDU (the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users) and the BC Compassion Club. [continues 1030 words]
