Harm reduction isn't only about protecting the health of a drug user. These types of programs reduce the impact narcotics have on many aspects of society, from health-care costs to crime. We're glad that the Vancouver Island Health Authority is expanding its harm-reduction kits around Vancouver Island, including Nanaimo, as long as they do so with proper consultation and transparency. Last year, VIHA started distributing kits with crack-pipe mouthpieces, syringes and other items in Nanaimo as part of its secondary harm-reduction program, geared to discreetly reducing the spread of disease among addicts. [continues 441 words]
Nanaimo trustees have struck down a movement within their ranks to require criminal record checks for candidates. The Tuesday vote was 6-2 against the motion, with Donna Allen, who introduced the motion, and newly elected trustee Kim Howland the only board members to support the policy. However, board chairman Jamie Brennan introduced a new motion that would require successful trustee candidates to submit to criminal record checks after an election. His motion is not expected to be tabled until February, possibly at annual general meeting of the B.C. School Trustees' Association. [continues 225 words]
In the letters debating the marijuana issue, one might have gotten the impression that pot possession is just a sort of joke, since it will be legalized, of course, any day now. Not a good thing for the youth of Nanaimo to be under this misapprehension. Whether one is for or against the legalization of pot, the facts are, according to Statistics Canada, that 58,000 Canadians were arrested for pot possession in 2010, up 14% from 2009. Canadian police continue to lay pot charges and the Tory Omnibus crime bill will significantly increase penalties for cannabis offences. It is no joke to have a criminal record. Madeline Bruce Nanaimo [end]
Officials Say Harm Reduction Benefits the Public by Reducing Spread Of Disease Nanaimo addicts will soon have more places to get free kits containing needles, condoms and crack-smoking paraphernalia. Vancouver Island Health Authority is expanding a program to distribute harm reduction kits around the Island, including Nanaimo. Last year VIHA started distributing kits with crack pipe mouthpieces, syringes and other items in Nanaimo as part of its secondary harm reduction program, geared to discreetly reducing the spread of disease among addicts. Another two new locations will be added. [continues 281 words]
One man dead, another injured in gang shooting One man dead, another critically injured in what cops say is ongoing turf war The latest fatal shooting in Surrey on Thursday was likely a continuation of the ongoing settling of accounts between rival gangs following the murder of Gurmit Singh Dhak in October of 2010. "If you are thinking of a gang war where there is going to be a . . . shift in power, I don't think that is what we are seeing here," Sgt. Bill Whalen spokesman for B.C.'s Combined Special Forces Enforcement Unit, which targets organized crime in the province, said Friday. [continues 212 words]
Re: "'Nanaimo RCMP link huge drug bust to notorious gang' ( Daily News, Jan. 18) The Canadian and B.C. governments claim to be making ground in the war on drugs, but a quick look at the estimates of regional cocaine flows suggests this is only a fraction of the amount which passes through America into this country. These so-called drug busts are heralded as a trophies in the struggle which authorities are waging against drug trafficking. Such self-congratulatory acts may not be entirely warranted. If the percentage of seizures are applied to the United Nations Office on Drugs and the RCMP'S crime estimates that some 165 metric tonnes of cocaine is consumed in North America annually, it could mean around 143.55 tonnes of the drug pass into the U.S. and Canada annually. [continues 51 words]
The Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district's new board of trustees will consider advocating for mandatory criminal record checks for trustee candidates. Trustee Donna Allen has made a motion on the issue for next month's annual general meeting of the B.C. School Trustees' Association. If the majority of the local trustees agree with Allen's recommendation, the board will ask the association to urge the provincial government to amend the Criminal Records Review Act to require all school board candidates in B.C. to submit a current criminal record check along with their nomination papers. [continues 469 words]
Light to moderate marijuana smokers show no signs of lung damage, in contrast to cigarette smokers, according to results of a study conducted in the United States. A report to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that, over a 20-year period, pot smokers generally did not experience a loss in lung functioning. Many actually had enhanced lung capacity, which one researcher involved in the study speculated might come from the common practice of holding one's breath after inhaling cannabis smoke to maximize its intoxicating effects. [continues 296 words]
Vancouver's Insite Is Becoming Overcrowded With Addicts, Says Service Providers The group that runs InSite says there is a clear need for a second supervised injection site in Vancouver. Mark Townsend from the Portland Hotel Society (PHS) - that operates North America's first supervised injection site - says with more than 12,000 registered users and 800 injections a day, the initial location in the drugriddled Hastings Street corridor is becoming overcrowded. "I think there needs to be another one, for sure," Townsend said on Sunday. "The one facility is tiny in a big, big city, so clearly, you would have to have others," he said. [continues 301 words]
Ontario and Quebec Both Refused to Pick Up Extra Costs Associated With C-10s Canadian jail cells are not going to be brimming with teenagers and college kids who share pot with their pals, according to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who maintains one of the most contentious facets of his omnibus crime bill has been grossly misrepresented. Mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana production are designed to target organized crime, gangs and grow-ops, he said in a year-end interview with Postmedia News. [continues 586 words]
Crack addicts in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside have started receiving free crack pipes as part of a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority harm reduction strategy aimed at curbing the spread of disease. Part of a $60,000 trial project first announced in August, the pipes are just one piece of drug paraphernalia found inside kits that have been distributed to users in the troubled neighbourhood since the beginning of the month. The glass pipes are heatresistant and shatterproof, which experts say should reduce injury to the users' lips and mouth - wounds that can make them more susceptible to diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis B and C. [continues 153 words]
The RCMP is preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to send police officers to Phoenix for three weeks of training where alcohol and drugs feature prominently and a bar is a hotel requirement. The Mounties are planning six workshops - each three weeks long - in the sun-soaked Arizona city between April 2012 and March 2013 to train a few hundred RCMP, provincial and municipal police officers from across the country on recognizing and testing drug-impaired drivers. Police say there's currently a dearth of officers in Canada with expertise in spotting and catching drug-impaired drivers. The RCMP, which administers the training of all Canadian police officers on drug recognition, says Phoenix is the teaching hot spot and best place to find high drivers in mass quantity. [continues 171 words]
More than $100 million worth of electricity is stolen from BC Hydro every year, with much of it stolen to power marijuana grow-ops. As an honest BC Hydro customer, it makes me more than just a little unhappy to know that people are stealing electricity. It makes me even more unhappy to know that the cost of all that stolen electricity gets added to the hydro bills of honest BC Hydro customers like you and me. That's why I'm glad BC Hydro is finally installing smart meters and putting an end to preventable electricity theft. Smart meters will let BC Hydro zero in on electricity theft quickly and accurately and shut down the perpetrators. The old mechanical meters BC Hydro has relied on since the 1940s and 1950s simply can't do that. [continues 125 words]
Re: 'Pot regulation makes sense' (Daily News, Nov. 30) There is a big difference between condoning marijuana use and protecting children from drugs. Decriminalization acknowledges the social reality of marijuana and frees users from the stigma of life-shattering criminal records. What's really needed is a regulated market with age controls. Separating the hard and soft drug markets is critical. As long as organized crime controls marijuana distribution, consumers will continue to come into contact with sellers of hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. [continues 75 words]
Re: "'Allen makes mockery of system by refusing seat' ( Daily News, Dec. 13) Donna Allen is "taking political action that is so desperately needed to invigorate our democracy" in the words of an NDN columnist by resigning her seat on the school board. Her action has had the effect of opening up the dialogue of how our culture will designate the use of marijuana for either recreational, and/or medicinal use and also for what age group marijuana use should be particularly discouraged, for health reasons, and also because of the danger of addiction. [continues 169 words]
Nanaimo's new medical health officer is supportive of a push to regulate marijuana distribution like tobacco, to reduce gang violence and to make the drug less accessible to young people. Stop the Violence Coalition B.C, says taxing pot would be better than the billions of dollars spent on enforcement. SVCBC created headlines in the fall when four former Vancouver mayors signed a letter favouring its position. The organization released a report today showing pot is cheaper, stronger and more widely available since prohibition, based on government's own statistics and an Angus-Reid public opinion poll showing wide support for decriminalization. [continues 192 words]
B.C. police engaged in a "serious misuse of their powers" when they extended an investigation of a suspected medical marijuana theft to search the home for signs of criminal activity, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled. Justice Brian Joyce said the Abbotsford police were justified in searching the home after suspecting a violent grow rip had occurred on Feb. 10, 2009, but they exceeded their limits in obtaining a search warrant after a "rough count" of the medical marijuana plants inside indicated the grower was in violation of his licence. [continues 254 words]
Re: 'More study needed on effects of marijuana' (Daily News, Dec. 14) Madeline Bruce may be interested in one statistic regarding the God-given plant cannabis (marijuana). In over 5,000 years of documented medical use there hasn't been one single death directly related to cannabis use. That's safety on a Biblical scale. Truthfully, Stan White Dillon, Colo. [end]
Re: "'No amount of penalties will end black market' ( Daily News, Dec. 5) Whether or not marijuana use will be legalized, the truth about the possible long-term side effects are still not easy to get at, and there is a groundswell of popularity for the drug now, particularly in light of some positive medical uses of it. From many sectors I am reading there needs to be more longterm studies about the effects of long term marijuana use. Even with drugs that have been researched by pharmaceutical companies and been prescribed by doctors for years, untoward side effects have occurred later, such as in the case of Thalidomide and Valium, which was found to be seriously addictive. Also there is Chlorpromazine in the "'60s, which turned the faces of many patients purple, permanently, if they went outside in bright sunlight for hours, and caused tardive dyskenesias, which is, in part, involuntary facial grimacing and twitching, and shuffling gait. [continues 97 words]
Re: "'Proof is out there about harm from marijuana' ( Daily News, Dec. 3) Madeline Bruce forgot to mention that the people with this biology practically all get some form of adult psychosis, and not just the percentage, too small to mention, who smoked marijuana. Stay with the truth. Unlike opiate pain killers where every user eventually becomes addicted, marijuana has never proved to be. Unlike acetaminophen that has killed hundreds due to liver failure and not recommended for young children, marijuana has the distinction of not one death ever proven to be caused by its use. We know about alcohol addiction and have just hit the tip on caffeine. Neil Saunders Nanaimo [end]
