I'm writing this on the day marijuana entrepreneur Marc Emery is being taken in handcuffs to the U.S. to plead guilty for selling marijuana seeds from his multimillion-dollar Vancouver-based mail-order business. Leaving aside all the galling issues about U.S. legal control over a Canadian business, the arrest of a Canadian citizen who has never visited the U.S., the inexplicable length of his expected sentence - five years incarceration in the U.S. for a one-month offence in Canada - - the victimless nature of his crime and the self-defeating wounds he inflicts on himself from incendiary pro-pot campaigning, his case highlights the role of pot as the elephant in the B.C. economy. [continues 554 words]
Congratulations to the Globe and Mail for putting the Downtown Eastside's (DTES) inscrutable problems under the label of "Canada's slum" in its recent series. Far too often, this neighbourhood is seen as an isolated problem, with solutions to its myriad problems to be found only by spending money in that neighbourhood. The DTES is a national problem, the Vancouver manifestation of a national outbreak of homelessness. The DTES will only stop being a slum when we have a national homelessness policy, a national mental health policy and still more spending across the province for drug treatment, mental health treatment and social housing. [continues 539 words]
If you drive criminal behaviour out of one neighbourhood, does it show up with equal force in another one? That's the $2.3-million question the Vancouver City Police have put to the citizens. It's usually answered with the waterbed metaphor: put your foot down in one corner and the water bulges up everywhere else. No water ever disappears. Businesses all over the region have been bracing for, and sometimes facing, a bulge in crime in their neighbourhoods since the Vancouver police put a big foot down in the Downtown Eastside in early April. The police have asked the City of Vancouver for $2.3 million, in addition to their $133-million budget to cover the extra costs of overtime from this initiative. With the three-month time limit coming due, everyone is wondering whether it's working. In particular, where have the bad guys gone? Businesses in the Dunsmuir and Seymour area and further out along East Hastings say part of the crime has moved into their area, with junkies shooting up in their alleys and breaking into their stores and cars. Some of the younger addicts are congregating around the youth services centres at the south end of Granville downtown. Surrey and New Westminster are feeling threatened. [continues 695 words]
With drug-driven property crime at or near the top of every list of business concerns in the Lower Mainland, it was amazing to hear the experts at a recent drug policy seminar all pointing to the same solutions. Equally amazing is the fierce resistance in some quarters to adopting those solutions, because they require us to change our thinking about controlling drug abuse. The only thing worse than some of these solutions is the status quo. Based on what I heard at the Saving Money, Saving Lives conference last week at Simon Fraser University, here are some things the business community can do. [continues 747 words]
The latest hit to the forest industry in B.C. -- an estimated 14,000 jobs lost for an indefinite period -- has sobered outlooks and prospects across the business spectrum. Now, more than ever, some entrepreneurs in this province will be drawn to an industry that ranks among the three or four biggest in the province, one in which we are reputed to be world leaders: growing and exporting high-quality marijuana. It's an industry that exemplifies what has long been advocated for the forest industry. Through ingenuity and research, B.C. growers have developed strains that enable them to charge premium prices for a commodity otherwise widely available. [continues 770 words]
