The chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) said the government has been winning the war on illegal drugs. Speaking at the Fernandina Media Forum in San Juan the other day, PDEA Director Anselmo Avenido said there are several indicators that would prove their claim of success. "We could say we are succeeding since, at the moment, shabu now is very scarce. In fact, the price of shabu has gone up to 5,000 or more per gram from P2,000 after we were able to cut the supply," Avenido said. [continues 312 words]
RE "Tory boss kicks off campaign" (March 11): Lisa MacLeod said "You can vote for a Liberal candidate who supports the crack pipe program, supports the decriminalization of marijuana and supports the legalization of prostitution, or you can vote for me -- a Progressive Conservative who values strong families, safer streets and self-reliance." What MacLeod fails -- or refuses -- to recognize is that the crack pipe program reduces the spread of deadly diseases, and that saves the taxpayers money later on. As for marijuana, all history, science, and common sense dictate that regulating pot like alcohol would generate tax revenue, end the black market economy, and reduce children's access to the substance. [continues 73 words]
Regarding the editorial Dude! Chill Out Over Pot Laws (March 12): Once again a confused media misinforms the public. To start with, pot laws in Canada are not "rarely enforced." There were more people busted for simple possession in 2005 than in any other year in history. Even in 2003, when marijuana was technically legal for several months, police still broke their 2002 bust records. Another bit of misinformation: "There's a huge, huge difference between decriminalizing marijuana and legalizing it -- as they do in the Netherlands." The Netherlands has never legalized marijuana -- they just stopped enforcing the laws because they realized that it was pointless and costly. [continues 427 words]
Marc Emery Embarks On A Possible Farewell Tour Across Canada Vancouver-based marijuana advocate Marc Emery was busted by the RCMP in July of 2005, as the result of an extensive investigation conducted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Now, the self-proclaimed "Prince of Pot" is still facing extradition to the United States for selling millions of marijuana seeds across the border from his Vancouver-based business. If convicted in the States of all charges, he may spend the rest of his life in jail. [continues 777 words]
To the editor: Regarding your Feb. 26 editorial on the opiate scourge: Switzerland's heroin maintenance trials have been shown to reduce drug-related disease, death and crime among chronic users. Addicts would not be sharing needles if not for zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean syringes, nor would they be committing crimes if not for artificially inflated black market prices. Providing chronic addicts with standardized doses in a clinical setting eliminates many of the problems associated with heroin use. [continues 68 words]
The White House drug czar yesterday sounded the alarm on high school kids drinking and drugging during spring break but backed away from assertions that 1 in 7 high schoolers under age 18 are partying unsupervised in hotspots like Cancun and Miami Beach. "It was in fact a very real human error," Rosanna Maietta, spokeswoman for theBush administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said of the agency's faulty math, which suggested that 15 percent of all high schoolers under age 18 were unleashed to go wild during the annual vacation. [continues 408 words]
The giant, kite-like shades that keep the sun off of Collier County schools' playgrounds could become a thing of the past if the School Board finds them too costly to repair. Board members will consider a proposal by the district no to replace the sun shades damaged in Hurricane Wilma and will phase out the sun shades that were not damaged as they become worn. The School Board tabled the repair bill Feb. 16, asking the district to consider other options for the sun shades to help keep Collier County youth out of the sun. District officials said the sun shades would cost more than $421,000 to replace at 23 schools. The cost of a new sun shade structure is $90,000. [continues 514 words]
Kudos to The Herald for printing the truth about cannabis (hemp and marijuana). Cannabis should not just be legalized for medicinal use, but it should be taxed and regulated for use by adults. Considering how much safer and healthier cannabis is for people, if just one person stopped drinking and instead became a pothead, we would have a tremendously better society, in my experience with drunk people. Arresting over 700,000 people a year for cannabis is just a huge waste of our tax dollars. We need to separate cannabis from the black market and put it into a safer, regulated, legal market for adults. Parents who think that this would make cannabis more readily available to their children just aren't talking to their children. Since the 1980s, federal drug surveys have shown that cannabis is "fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain every year by over 80 percent of high school seniors. Could cannabis really get any easier to obtain for our children than it already is today? [continues 111 words]
To the Editor, Re: Pot allegations too sweeping, no backup, March 9. Prosecutions for marijuana offences resemble the issue of abortion in the last century: a law supported by only a minority of Canadians that criminalizes 10 per cent of the rest. The difference is this law is being imposed by the U.S. through cowardly Canadian politicians. We at http://juror.ca would like to remind the public and potential = jurors in Canada about jury nullification - a jury's power to acquit regardless of the law. [continues 57 words]
Like letter writer James Stepp, (Suppressing truth?, March 11) I too appreciated your article on hemp. I must correct Mr. Stepp on a minor point in his letter. The cannabis study on cancer was conducted in 1974, where researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice - lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia. That study was shut down by the Drug Enforcement Agency and buried. It was validated again in 2000 when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. [continues 87 words]
Methamphetamine has ravaged our community and put severe strains on local and state agencies. Meth has destroyed families, made parents neglect and abandon their innocent babies and children. Meth has not done anything positive for our community. Finally, an anti-meth bill has been approved by the Senate and attached to the U.S. Patriot Act, a centerpiece of the president's war on terrorism. At last meth has been placed where it belongs, as an immediate threat to our national security. This disease is eating our society from within. By adding this legislation to the Patriot Act we have escalated this cancer in American society from a petty drug crime to its appropriate position as an act of domestic terrorism. [continues 78 words]
Drugs, disease, crime, corruption and racial profiling were just some of the subjects covered by retired undercover narcotics officer Jack A. Cole in his discussion about drug legalization on Thursday, March 9th in Marcucella Hall. Four years ago, Cole and four other officers started an international nonprofit organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). The goal of LEAP is to educate the public on the negative consequences of the continuing war on drugs. Cole, LEAP's executive director, gave a presentation that was filled with jaw-dropping statistics, all which back up his belief that the drug war (a term coined by President Nixon in 1968) has caused more problems than it solved. [continues 352 words]
KUANTAN, Tues. A Doctor Escaped The Gallows When He Pleaded Guilty To An Alternative Charge Of Possessing Dihydrocodeine Pills, Which Are Classified As Dangerous Drugs, Two Years Ago. Dr Allwee Idris, 43, was instead sentenced to four years' jail and fined RM20,000 or six months' imprisonment. He was originally charged with three counts of trafficking in codeine and dihydrocodeine in 2004. He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges which carry the mandatory death sentence. However, the prosecution offered alternative charges for the three counts today and Dr Allwee was only required to plead guilty to the third charge and admit the first two charges. [continues 308 words]
