Few Quebec police officers are trained to determine whether drivers are under the influence of marijuana, a federation of cop unions says. "Police services are simply not ready" for cannabis legalization, Robin Cote, president of the 4,500-member Federation des policiers et policieres municipaux du Quebec (FPMQ), said on Friday. The FPMQ issued a plea for more training a day after the provincial government presented its pot-legalization bill. Under Quebec's plan, there would be zero-tolerance for driving under the influence of marijuana. [continues 162 words]
Safe-driving activists, pot dispensers and businesses all have their own views Two cannabis activists aren't impressed with the marijuana legalization plan Quebec announced Thursday. But a group that works to decrease impaired driving praised the proposed legislation. Here's a look at some of the reaction to Bill 157: Marc-Boris St-Maurice, a longtime pot activist and founder of the Montreal Compassion Centre medical-marijuana dispensary: "Their plan is still half-baked," he said, noting guidelines announced Thursday are in a draft bill that might change. [continues 849 words]
Quebec unveiled its pot plan Thursday. Here are some answers to key questions. Here are answers to key questions as Quebec moves toward legalization of recreational marijuana by July 2018: Q Who will be allowed to buy pot? A Under the cannabis-legalization bill put forward Thursday, anyone over 18 would be able to purchase, possess and use cannabis in Quebec. The province's medical specialists wanted the minimum age set at 21. Q Where will pot be sold? A Quebec plans to create the Societe quebecoise du cannabis (SQC), which would sell pot via stores and a website. [continues 536 words]
Forget the private sector and the Societe des alcools du Quebec. A Montreal think-tank says the government department that oversees hospitals should manage pot sales. To generate bigger profits, private vendors would target young people, increase marijuana potency and press governments to relax pot laws, as seen in Colorado and Washington, the Institut de recherche et d'informations socioeconomiques (IRIS) says in a study published Tuesday. And opting for stores run by the liquor-store monopoly could open the door to alcohol and marijuana (a dangerous combination, they say) being sold side by side, and to pressure from the SAQ's only shareholder - Quebec's finance department - to boost profits without regard to detrimental health effects, the study says. [continues 281 words]
Eighteen or 21? The age of legal pot consumption was a topic of debate at hearings on Thursday, with two medical associations at odds. The Canadian Pediatric Society said 18 should be the minimum age to legally purchase recreational marijuana when the federal government legalizes it by July 1, 2018. A few minutes later, the Federation des medecins specialistes du Quebec, representing medical specialists, said it should be 21. The two groups were among dozens of organizations presenting briefs at a provincial public consultation in Montreal on Thursday and Friday. [continues 565 words]
Fears legalization may 'normalize' use of marijuana Teenagers who go from occasional pot smoking to weekly or daily use are two-and-a-half times more likely to have recurrent psychotic-like experiences, a new Montreal study says. And with legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada less than a year away, the study's senior author says governments are ill-prepared for the fact that adolescents will interpret the policy change as proof it's OK to smoke pot. "Our data show that transitioning to daily or weekly use of cannabis very significantly increases adolescents' risk of having more exaggerated and more frequent psychotic-like experiences," Patricia Conrod, a professor at the Universite de Montreal's psychiatry department, said in an interview. [continues 411 words]
Will you be able to pick up a bag of pot at a Societe du cannabis du Quebec, run by the same people who sell you wine and scotch? Employees of the province's liquor stores - the Societe des alcools du Quebec (SAQ) - hope so. But Montreal's public-health system is dead set against that idea, suggesting the SAQ should not be a model because it promotes the use of alcohol to fill government coffers. On Thursday, Ottawa announced its long-awaited legalization plan, saying it wants to provide regulated access to recreational cannabis no later than July 2018. [continues 509 words]
Arbitration Rulings Show It's Considered a 'Disability' MONTREAL - A war of words has broken out over a fired cocaine-using locomotive engineer. Canadian Pacific chief executive Hunter Harrison lashed out when CP was ordered this month to reinstate the engineer even though an arbitrator confirmed the employee had "consumed cocaine at a time and of a quantity which could impact his work performance." Harrison said: "On my watch, this individual will not operate a locomotive." The engineer's union - Teamsters Canada Rail Conference - called Harrison's comments an "unjustified and unprecedented" personal attack, arguing the worker deserved a second chance. [continues 1456 words]
Hugo St-Onge is convinced he has the winning conditions for his looming "reeferendum." His Bloc Pot party, set to run 50 to 65 candidates in the March 26 election, is organizing the online plebiscite on the legalization of marijuana in Quebec. It'll be a fair process, the Bloc leader insisted at a news conference at an Ontario St. bar yesterday. A non-party-member will oversee voting. Only those on the official voters' list can cast ballots (unless, of course, they're 16 or 17 years old, in which case anybody can vote). [continues 134 words]
Social and justice workshop passes measures; Marijuana Party founder says legalization of pot would be a boon to tax collectors ANDY RIGA, The Gazette Liberal delegates today will debate whether the party should support a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Montrealer Ethan Cox, a gun-control activist working with Dawson shooting victim Hayder Kadhim, yesterday made a plea for the motion, which urges Ottawa to support "legislation to eliminate the personal use of automatic and semi-automatic weapons." Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper "has embarrassed himself in front of the country by refusing to meet with Hayder Kadhim, by refusing to deal with gun control," Cox told delegates at a policy workshop. [continues 568 words]
Is Parliament Hill ready for a pot-smoking MP/dominatrix? "Ottawa is where I came from and where I started my pot-smoking and my domination, so I certainly hope they're ready to reap what they've sown," Montrealer Carol Taylor, running for the Marijuana Party in her home town of Ottawa, tells The E-File. Taylor, a 29-year-old former Senate page, goes by the name Ms. Qui in her local dungeon, equipped with whips, chains and a "suspension cage." Domination and politics "go well together - both are very negotiation-oriented," says Taylor, whose Web site address can't be published in a family paper. When not inflicting pain, she smokes an eighth of an ounce of pot daily to dull her own pain, the result of a 1992 stroke. An advocate of legalized pot, Taylor wears latex hot pants and claims her "primal fetish is federal politics." She's running against Liberal MP Mauril Belanger, chief government whip. [continues 90 words]
"Pierre Trudeau smoked my pot, so why, 30 years later, do I have to hide to smoke it?" That question was on Michel Allard's mind yesterday, as he stood at the back of the sweet-smelling Marijuana Party headquarters, watching leader Marc-Boris St-Maurice announce it'll run 100 candidates across Canada, including 40 in Quebec. When Allard, the party's man in Laval-les-Iles, was a 20-something pot vendor in the 1970s, customers included two children of a Trudeau employee. [continues 352 words]
