About 10 people took part in a legalize cannabis protest and "smoke-in" in Aurora today. The event, which took place outside the historic post office on Yonge Street, was designed to coincide with similar so-called "420" events around the world to celebrate marijuana and advocate for the legalization of the drug. Event organizer Heidi Stoecklin, founder of Aurorans for World Peace, said she was lighting up to bring awareness to the issue. "I hope to get across that marijuana should be seen as a medicine rather than a drug," the 44-year-old Aurora resident said. "I would also like people to better understand that the suppression of marijuana causes our resources to be spent on police rather than helping people." [continues 96 words]
A shopkeeper was convicted of drug-related charges while a co-accused woman was acquitted. Adam Chaplin, 30, was found guilty while Alisha Wolfe, 31, was acquitted of charges stemming from an incident at a Newmarket business in 2007. A similar charge against a third accused person was withdrawn in October 2007. A sentencing and forfeiture hearing will be held Feb. 2. Police received information that drug paraphernalia was being sold at Lotus at 150 Main St., Newmarket. Officers executed a search warrant in January 2007 and seized more than 600 items including smoking instruments, scales and marijuana grinders. [end]
Drugs and vice officers approached the homes just as they would during any other marijuana raid operation. But after entering a home in Newmarket and another in Aurora, during two separate raids in 2007, police were surprised to learn they weren't more of the dozens of illegal grow labs York police shut down every year. Instead, they were federally licenced, Health Canada approved, medicinal marijuana grow houses. York police did not consult Health Canada before raiding either the Aurora or the Newmarket growing locations - which appeared no different than other homes in the neighbourhood. [continues 1004 words]
Let's get this straight. The federal government grants licences to individuals to grow "medicinal" marijuana for their own use, but refuses to tell the local police who holds such licences and it appears inspections are all but non-existent. Does anyone see the potential for abuse here? We've all heard about levels of government or agencies tasked with our protection failing to communicate with one another, but this takes it to a whole new level. Licensed or not, a marijuana growing operation, particularly one that operates without oversight, comes with inherent risk. There's potential for mould and electrical problems, not to mention attracting criminals if word gets out about what's going on inside the home. [continues 167 words]
Newmarket - A Maple marijuana grower was sentenced to 16 months in jail and had his house seized by the Crown Wednesday. Thanh Tung Dam, 43, pleaded guilty to production of a controlled substance in Newmarket court in connection with a York Regional Police raid at a Cherokee Drive home in November 2006. Drug and vice officers found more than 400 plants and growing equipment inside the Major Mackenzie Drive and Jane Street area home. Investigators found a large amount of marijuana and evidence to suggest some marijuana had been harvested before the raid, police said. [continues 136 words]
Re: Champ shares story of life's hard uppercut, Apr. 26. George Chuvalo was a courageous and skillful boxer, but his take on the tragic heroin-induced deaths of his sons is tragically wrong. Simply urging kids to just say no to drugs doesn't work and, besides, it was drug prohibition that killed his sons, not the drug itself. Prohibition works in two ways to harm users. The drugs are often adulterated because of prohibition, so that, even though the 1973 Le Dain Commission concluded "there appears to be little permanent physiological damage from chronic use of pure opiate narcotics," prohibition kills users by denying them access to unadulterated drugs. [continues 103 words]
It has been a chilly response in the three weeks since the province widened liquor laws aimed at protecting women at bars. The new licence would allow patrons to take their drinks into the bathroom with them, rather than leaving them unattended. It was heralded as a significant deterrent to drink-spiking with so-called date rape drugs. However, only about 100 of the more than 20,000 bars and restaurants provincewide have applied since the new liquor licence was enacted Feb. 1, according to the Ministry of Government Services. [continues 688 words]
The year is only a month old and already York Regional Police have found eight children living in houses where marijuana is being grown. Last year, 27 children were found in 93 marijuana raids in this region. Police say the phenomenon has become "fairly common". According to the Children's Aid Society, 83 per cent of children taken into care after being found in a grow house are returned to their parents or guardians. Most of the time, people who expose children to life in a drug den face no additional consequences. [continues 269 words]
Officers in the drug and vice squad raided a Main Street store for the second time in two years. More than 600 pieces of drug paraphernalia were seized from Lotus after York Regional Police descended on the shop following an investigation that began late last year. A man and two women from East Gwillimbury, all in their late 20s, have been charged with selling instruments for illicit drug use. Last Wednesday, officers executed a search warrant at the Main Street shop where they confiscated drug-smoking instruments, grinders and oil extractors. [continues 190 words]
Does a take-back-the-street protest help clean up drug-ridden neighbourhoods? Just ask a group of Newmarket residents who demonstrated last week in front of a landlord's residence in Aurora. The demonstration marked the first of three visits to homes of landlords accused of making profit from rundown rental units used to buy and sell drugs. "We got a lot of criticism from others, including from real estate agents and landlords but, at the end of the day, we know we're on the right track. We got results," protest organizer and Newmarket Councillor Joe Sponga said. [continues 430 words]
Nearly Impossible To Evict Prostitutes, Drug Addict Tenants, Timothy Street Landlord Says The landlord of a rundown rental unit called Newmarket's downtown a "cesspool," during a confrontation in Aurora Wednesday. Minutes after residents started waving placards in front of his executive home near the corner of Wellington and Leslie streets in Aurora, landlord Nicholas Podstatzky came out of his home and immediately got into a shouting match. "You're living off the avails of drug trafficking," one protester screamed. Mr. Podstatzky retaliated. [continues 624 words]
ISSUE: Young citizens battling substance abuse have a nine or 10-week wait to get help they need in York Region. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens if someone who needs counselling and support for drug or alcohol addiction has to wait 12 weeks to get it. Yet that's what is happening in York Region. More disturbing is that our young citizens who are battling substance abuse have a nine or 10-week wait to get the help they need. This, as Addiction Services for York Region executive director John O'Mara points out, is unacceptable because "youth need someone the next day". [continues 423 words]
ISSUE: Chief Armand La Barge won't release list of grow ops without provincial law clearly defining such. We all know the dangers of indoor marijuana grow operations. Growing weed indoors creates incredible moisture damage and makeshift wiring to bypass hydro metres and exposed electrical panels are a fire hazard. Then there is the less obvious problems of mould spores forming inside walls that may not reveal themselves until months after a grow op has been dismantled. All of this puts families and neighbourhoods at risk. [continues 656 words]
Chinese Leader Sees Grow-Ops As Problem As the newest member of York Region's police services board, Richmond Hill entrepreneur Daisy Wai is ready to tackle some serious issues. "One of the major concerns in this community is the (marijuana) grow ops," she said. "I know the board has been working hard on this issue already, but we must do all we can to get rid of this problem." Ms Wai, who runs two advertising firms in Richmond Hill, moved to the area from Hong Kong 23 years ago. [continues 182 words]
Hydroponic stores should help police track down marijuana grow operations, a York Regional Police drug squad officer says. If indoor growing supply shops tracked customer purchases and informed police of suspicious buys, it would make stopping large-scale marijuana operations easier, Det. Don Cardwell said. "We just want them to co-operate with us," he said. But just because a store sells hydroponics and indoor growing equipment, it doesn't mean it's supplying marijuana operations, Wendy Herbert of Markham Hydroponics said. [continues 416 words]
Five years ago, Jessica Weihrich was a straight-A student from an upper-middle class family without a care in the world. No one would have suspected she would soon be strung out on heroin and crack and selling her body to feed her addiction. "I was a normal teenager. I had it all and I threw it all away for drugs," the Ottawa resident told a smattering of concerned parents and teenagers at a drug and addiction forum in Aurora Thursday night. [continues 697 words]
Re: Wouldn't parents care if son bought drug paraphernalia?, letter to the editor by Joan Williams, June 9. Ms Williams says Lotus owners should be ashamed because they sell pipes and they have a child? I have met this baby about whom you are so worried and he is one happy child. I just happened to meet Sage at the York Region Food Network community garden. His parents are among many people who want to grow their own healthy food and grow extra for people who have not enough. [continues 251 words]
Re: Shop owner angry after police seize drug pipes, June 5. As a regular visitor on Newmarket's Main Street, I am outraged at the actions of York Regional Police. Apparently, something that could be used for illegal purposes should not be sold. Water bottles can be emptied and made into makeshift bongs. Butter knives can be heated for smoking hash. Lighters are used for lighting cigarettes and illegal substances. Are we going to allow these things to stay on store shelves? [continues 101 words]
Re: Store owners angry after police seize drug pipes, June 5. Lotus owners Adam Chaplin and Alisha Wolfe are being unfairly targeted after thousands of dollars in merchandise was seized from their store? They are being victimized by police for selling illicit drug paraphernalia? The photograph on the front of The Era-Banner is of this couple and their seven-month-old son, Sage. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture? This couple has brought an innocent child into the world and is selling drug paraphernalia? [continues 106 words]
Drug of the millennium on way from west coast Crystal meth's popularity has spread across British Columbia over the past four years as fast as a wildfire in the interior. Now law enforcement experts agree, York Region and the rest of the Greater Toronto Area could be the next logical destination for the dangerous drug and labs that create it. "If it's not there now, you can bet it soon will be," said Corp. Scott Rintoul with the RCMP's drug enforcement branch in B.C. "In the 1980s there was coke. In the '90s crack. In the new millennium, it's all about crystal meth." [continues 1129 words]
