Victims of bad science at Motherisk Return their children. That's what they want - the parents who saw their kids ripped away based on flawed alcohol and drug hair tests from the now shuttered Motherisk lab at the famous Sick Children's hospital. A report tabled this week examined 1,270 cases handled by the lab going back more than two decades and found 56 clear cases where Motherisk's flawed test results had a "substantial impact" on the decision to remove children - - though critics argue there are far more. [continues 651 words]
It seems the TTC union protests too much. What exactly are they afraid of? Why are they so opposed to random drug and alcohol testing that they were in court Tuesday seeking an injunction to stop management from starting the testing on April 1? London has it. So does New York City and Sydney. If they are responsible for millions of passenger trips a years, why shouldn't they be willing to abide by the strictest measurements of sobriety on the job? [continues 638 words]
Judge blasts cops for actions that sent man to prison for 5 years It's another black eye for Toronto Police delivered from the judicial bench. Unfortunately, it comes rather late for Nosakhare Ohenhen. Long after the admitted drug dealer finished serving five years in prison, Justice Michael Quigley has acquitted him of all charges at his retrial, slamming Toronto cops for racial profiling and suggesting they may have even planted the drugs found in the man's Jaguar when he was stopped on Aug. 21, 2008. [continues 645 words]
There goes another Harper tough-on-crime law out the judicial window. Because, of course, we wouldn't want to be too hard on a woman farming 1,100 pot plants in the middle of a Jane St. highrise apartment building. In a landmark ruling, an Ontario judge has struck down yet another of the former Conservative government's mandatory minimum sentences as unconstitutional, this time the two-year minimum jail term - with an extra year for endangering public safety - for growing more than 500 marijuana plants. [continues 626 words]
'Epidemic' of drugs forces judge to acquit jail guard Instead of hard time, inmates are doing high time in prisons that sound more like drug dens than detention centres. An Ontario judge was recently forced to acquit a jail guard and an inmate on drug trafficking charges because the "epidemic" of illicit substances in the jail left a reasonable doubt about whether the pair were responsible for the pot and hash oil discovered during a search. Drugs are so common at London's Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre (EMDC), said Ontario Court of Justice John Skowronski, that a surveillance video inside the jail showed a "veritable conga line" of inmates apparently waiting their turn to buy what was being sold in the showers outside of camera range. [continues 613 words]
'Epidemic' Of Drugs Forces Judge to Acquit Jail Guard LONDON - Instead of hard time, inmates are doing high time in prisons that sound more like drug dens than detention centres. An Ontario judge was recently forced to acquit a jail guard and an inmate on drug trafficking charges because the "epidemic" of illicit substances in the jail left a reasonable doubt about whether the pair were responsible for the pot and hash oil discovered during a search. Drugs are so common at London's Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre (EMDC), said Ontario Court of Justice John Skowronski, that a surveillance video inside the jail showed a "veritable conga line" of inmates apparently waiting their turn to buy what was being sold in the showers outside of camera range. [continues 613 words]
It's Been 9 Years Since Allegedly Bad Officer Was Suspended For a lucky nine years, Toronto Police Const. Ioan-Florin Floria has been sitting at home and drawing his salary while suspended from duty on allegations he used his position to assist his friends in an Eastern European drug cartel. Almost a decade has passed since the former traffic cop was swept up in a shocking drug bust that saw the alleged kingpins of a Romanian gang under arrest for an international operation that swapped marijuana for cocaine. [continues 630 words]
Medical Pot User Fighting For Driver's Licence Sam Slaughter is not a drug addict. He has repeatedly told them. His doctor has told them as well. And yet because he's legally prescribed medical marijuana to deal with chronic jaw pain, the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) has suspended Slaughter's driver's licence and refuses to reinstate it. He has to prove that he has been free of "illicit drugs" for a year or attend a drug treatment program; Until then, he can't drive. [continues 587 words]
No apology for nabbing lawyer BRAMPTON - Toronto criminal lawyer Laura Liscio had to explain to her grandma in Italy why Peel Regional Police arrested her for smuggling drugs to a client. And now finally cleared, she wants the police to pay for the embarrassment and shame they've caused. In the very courthouse where she was slapped with handcuffs and paraded in her robes to a waiting cruiser, Liscio, 32, was exonerated Thursday when the Crown withdrew all outstanding charges against her for having "no reasonable prospect of conviction." [continues 661 words]
Tories' war on weed a losing battle - and rightly so Well, there go more of our tax dollars up in smoke. What exactly were the feds toking? In an obviously losing battle, Ottawa went to the Supreme Court of Canada to argue that patients using medical marijuana should only be allowed to inhale - that getting their pot in any other form breaks the law. Not surprisingly, the high court kicked them to the curb, again. Medical marijuana is legal, the court reminded them in a unanimous decision, and that means there should be no difference between whether it's ingested via a joint or baked in a brownie. For many patients, marijuana is more effective when eaten rather than inhaled and for many others - such as children and patients with lung conditions - smoking medicinal pot isn't an option. [continues 575 words]
Trucker denied gig because of her medical marijuana use Patti Satok is a tough mother trucker - a straight-talking, red cowboy-boot wearing former boxing champ - but she says she has been beaten up more by the trucking industry than she ever was in the ring. Now she's fighting back for her right to keep on trucking - even if she does have a prescription for medicinal marijuana. In 2006, five years after she started driving a truck, Satok was crushed by a 680-kilogram skid of bottled water that pinned her against the inside wall of her tractor trailer, shattering her shoulder, knees and hip. She's had one surgery to repair her shoulder and another is scheduled next month for her knee. "I live with chronic, widespread pain every single day," says the 50-year-old mother of one as she pulls out a "buzz fudge" marijuana brownie at a Mississauga truck stop. [continues 617 words]
Behold the Church of the Gerbil, where the Ten Condiments command that you shall be fuzzy at all times and listen to "The Chipmunk Song" until the chinchillas come home. Call us sacrilegious, but we find it hard to take a "religion" seriously when it not only promotes the use and sale of pot and gives membership cards to dogs, but also claims The Church of the Gerbil as an affiliate. But the Church of the Universe does all of that and still insists it's a bona fide religion that deserves an exemption under the Charter of Rights that would let them practise their beliefs by legally puffing away. [continues 594 words]
Hard To Have Faith In A 'church' That Promotes Sale And Use Of Pot Behold the Church of the Gerbil, where the Ten Condiments command that you shall be fuzzy at all times and listen to The Chipmunk Song until the chinchillas come home. Call us sacrilegious, but we find it hard to take a "religion" seriously when it not only promotes the use and sale of pot and gives membership cards to dogs, but also claims the Church of the Gerbil as an affiliate. [continues 627 words]
Some of your pain pills have gone missing from the medicine cabinet and you're becoming suspicious. Or your teen is hanging out with a new group of friends, his grades are going south and he's behaving strangely. Is he taking drugs? You've rifled through his drawers, searched his eyes and even asked directly, but despite the denials and lack of real evidence, you still sense something is wrong. So, you worry and the statistics are hardly reassuring. The 2007 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey shows that 26 per cent of students reported using cannabis at least once in the past year. [continues 631 words]
Organizers were handing out festival maps at Queen's Park yesterday, but the kids ahead of me just laughed them off. "Who the hell needs a map?" chuckled one freedom toker to the other. "Just follow the smell." You sure couldn't miss it. My editor told me not to inhale, but I'm not sure what he was smoking when he offered that impossible advice. At Saturday's Toronto Freedom Festival and Global Marijuana March, the pungent aroma of weed was everywhere as thousands converged in the pouring rain to openly puff away in the leafy backyard of our provincial legislature. [continues 754 words]
But She Left With A Better Understanding. And The Munchies Organizers were handing out festival maps at Queen's Park yesterday, but the kids ahead of me just laughed them off. "Who the hell needs a map?" chuckled one freedom toker to the other. "Just follow the smell." You sure couldn't miss it. My editor told me not to inhale, but I'm not sure what he was smoking when he offered that impossible advice. At yesterday's Toronto Freedom Festival and Global Marijuana March, the pungent aroma of weed was everywhere as thousands converged in the pouring rain to openly puff away in the leafy backyard of our provincial legislature. [continues 852 words]
Woman Who Lost Only Sister To Overdose Asks Why Ecstasy's Risks Are Ignored Next Wave Of Users Line Up For Drug The memories come flooding back. The shock. The heartache. Another young woman dead, killed by a seemingly innocuous little pill; another family left devastated by the senselessness of it all. Nicole Amaral knows only too well the grieving an Ajax family is now going through as they deal with their 15-year-old daughter's overdose from Ecstasy. Just three years ago, and the police were knocking on her family's door with the news that still resonates to this day. [continues 695 words]
Our Lax Grow-Op Laws Need to Be Fixed Now, Michele Mandel Says FOR SO LONG, it was billed as a victimless crime. But not anymore. Not ever again. Not when four junior Mounties lie dead, their young lives cut short outside a remote Alberta marijuana grow operation, their blood spilled trying to eradicate what the RCMP commissioner calls a "plague" on society. Peter Christopher Schiemann, 25, Anthony Fitzgerald Orion Gordon, 28, Lionide Nicholas Johnston, 34, and Brock Warren Myrol, 29. In their honour, surely we have a duty now to finally take this scourge more seriously. [continues 600 words]
When your kid heads downtown to a rave this weekend, he may be getting advice on drug use by a city-funded outreach program. And it's not advice on just any recreational drug -- it's a blueprint on using potent GHB -- gamma hydroxy butyrate -- a drug increasingly used in date rape. The Toronto Raver Info Project has put out a pamphlet advising club kids on the safe way to use GHB. It practically waxes poetic on its power to leave the user with "the feelings of relaxation, inner peace, happiness and pleasure touching it can create (hence its nickname 'liquid ecstasy'...)." [continues 758 words]
