The Liberal's promise to legalize weed has unleashed a flood of illegal storefront dispensaries. Buying pot has never been easier. At the very least, nobody can accuse Canada Bliss Herbals of trying to conceal what it's selling. The sign outside the company's newest store (its third location, in the heart of Toronto's Junction neighbourhood) features a red Maple Leaf-with a green marijuana plant smack in the middle. "Living life in wellness," the slogan reads. [continues 3143 words]
The first clinical trial in Canada is under way to test whether the party drug could be part of a treatment for those with PTSD For the first time in four decades, an illegal psychedelic drug is being clinically tested in Canada. A team of psychiatrists and psychologists in Vancouver are giving 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA)-better known as the party drug ecstasy-to 12 people suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The drug will be administered in therapeutic sessions to help them deal with memories they have found difficult or impossible to confront, as part of a group of clinical trials, including in the U.S. and Israel. [continues 1943 words]
Marc and Jodie Emery on life in jail, their role in the legalization movement and the plan to seek 'political revenge' Marc Emery's two decades of marijuana activism and entrepreneurship have earned him the nickname "The Prince of Pot" and 23 trips to jail. The most recent, a 4 1/2-year stint in U.S. federal custody for his mail-order pot seed business, is now at an end. Awaiting deportation back to Canada, he spoke to Maclean's about his plans for the future from inside a Louisiana detention centre. His wife and fellow activist, Jodie Emery, joined in from their Vancouver home. [continues 1548 words]
After decades of wasted resources, clogged courtrooms and a shift in public perception, let's end the war on weed Sometime this year, if it hasn't happened already, the millionth Canadian will be arrested for marijuana possession, Dana Larsen estimates. The indefatigable B.C.-based activist for pot legalization is thinking of marking the occasion with a special ceremony. True, it will be impossible to know exactly who the millionth person is, but with the Conservative government's amped-up war on drugs, it won't be hard to find a nominee. As Larsen notes, the war on drugs in Canada is mostly a war on marijuana, "and most of that is a war on marijuana users." [continues 5925 words]
The RCMP were set to publicly acknowledge the benefits of projects like the Insite facility. Then they backed away. It would have been quite a news conference, and it very nearly happened. Last fall, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, after months of intense, private talks, agreed to face the media together to declare their agreement that research shows the "benefits" and "positive impacts" of supervised injection sites for intravenous drug users. [continues 2477 words]
Mexico's Drug Cartels Have Expanded Across The U.s., And Canada May Be Next When councilman Beto O'Rourke looks out the 10th-floor window of the El Paso, Texas, city hall, he sees a fence: "a big, ugly, Berlin-style fence. It's disgusting." The structure separates dusty El Paso from its proximal sister city: Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, which is, by all accounts, under siege. More than 850 people were killed in the northern Chihuahua city this year, nearly all of them in drug cartel-related violence. "Juarez has become the deadliest city in the world," O'Rourke insists. "It's a crazy, f-ked up situation." [continues 2870 words]
Quebecers With Handicaps Can Smoke Pot, Says Tribunal If it hurts, smoke a joint. That's the gist of a recent ruling by Quebec's human rights tribunal. Prompted by members of the Montreal Compassion Club, the tribunal looked into whether people who suffer discrimination as a result of medical marijuana use should be afforded protection under the Quebec Charter of Rights. It decided they should. The ruling is non-binding and applies only to Quebec, but advocates are hailing it as an important step toward changing drug laws across Canada. [continues 256 words]
How The Conservatives Plan To Get A Majority Government By Hating The '60s Bob Dylan once insisted "everybody must get stoned." The Rolling Stones' extended family used to include "cousin cocaine" and "sister morphine." While Lou Reed was boasting that shooting heroin made him feel "just like Jesus's son," Jefferson Airplane enjoined us to "feed our head." And then there were The Beatles, singing jolly little ditties about "Lucy in the sky with diamonds" and the "little help" they got from their "friends." [continues 775 words]
A New 'Cannabinoid Blocker' Could Help Rehabilitate the Weed History hasn't been kind to cannabis, a researcher at Dalhousie University lamented last year. The drug is one of the most used worldwide, but misconceptions about its therapeutic potential and safety continue. More research is on the way, but marijuana's true rehabilitation could come from, of all things, a new diet drug that works by deactivating the same therapeutic neural network in our bodies that marijuana activates. Whether or not you've ever tried marijuana, whether or not you've inhaled, you have your own cannabis infrastructure, a grid of nerve receptors that changes your experience of pain, sleep and appetite. We all make our own natural cannabinoids, marijuana-like chemical compounds. "If you're hungry," says Dr. Mark Ware, a professor at McGill University's pain centre, "they're probably active in you right now." [continues 567 words]
It sounded like a cool idea at the time, but were we ever really going to decriminalize marijuana? Is pot legal? The answer to that seems as cloudy as, well, you know. Responding to the complaint of a Toronto man charged with possession, the Ontario Court recently found Canada's marijuana laws to be without merit. "The government told the public not to worry about access to marijuana," said Judge Howard Borenstein. "They have a policy but not law.. In my view that is unconstitutional." [continues 1136 words]
Oil Workers And Bankers Are Its New Victims, Not The Down-And-Out While working as an engineer in Alberta's oil and gas fields, Brent, 34 (he requested that his last name not be used), started smoking crack. Like most of those who try the drug, he had already experimented with other drugs -- alcohol and marijuana. But after just a few short puffs of the white drug-laced smoke, he had a very expensive and destructive habit. Crack is made by adding cocaine to baking soda and water, cooking and cooling the mixture until rocks develop. Although it has a reputation for being a cheap high for the down-and-out, the reality is increasingly different, say drug counsellors across the country. The illicit substance is becoming the drug of choice across social milieus, says Jodi Dahlgren, a substance abuse therapist at Serenity House Drug & Alcohol Treatment Centre in Calgary. Dahlgren has treated bankers, oil workers and CEOs with crack addiction problems. "I used to work at Main and Hastings in Vancouver, but I've never seen anything this bad. I never thought I'd be treating millionaires with crack addictions." [continues 668 words]
A University Of Toronto Philosophy Prof Gets An Underground Pot-Smoking Room Doug Hutchinson marches briskly through Trinity College's cavernous basement hallway and stops in front of an unmarked door. "We're here," he says, key in hand. He pushes the door open, sits cross-legged on a small red area rug, and lights a joint. "I haven't decorated yet, but I do have an accent wall," says the University of Toronto philosophy professor, pointing to the mustard-coloured wall in this sparsely-furnished room. "When I was asked what colour I wanted in my 'office,' I said, 'it's not my office, it's my pot-smoking room.' The painter asked, 'how do I get one?' " [continues 675 words]
Wiping a Keyboard or Other Surface Can Now Tell Parents and Employers If the User Is, Well, a User Early last year Kelly Merriman, the then-33-year-old daughter of Saskatoon MLA Ted Merriman, went public about her struggle with crystal meth, a highly addictive street form of methamphetamine, or speed. The woman had had lots of experience with various drugs -- coke, LSD, ecstasy -- but crystal meth quickly pulled her down and nearly killed her. By the time she went into recovery, she'd lost 45 lb. in two months, had suffered liver damage and was living on chocolate milk. Her coming out was not only brave, but it also put a face on Saskatchewan's increasingly worrisome drug problem -- one the provincial government has been actively grappling with since 1998. According to a 2004 study, crystal meth use among respondents in the province was six per cent for 12- to 14-year-olds, 20 per cent among the 15-to-18 group, and 48 per cent for 19- to 24-year-olds. So it's hardly a surprise that a drug-detection technology used by U.S. Customs and the FBI had its Canadian launch in Saskatchewan for workplace and home use. [continues 692 words]
It All Began When A Border Agent Noticed A Drug Dealer Doing An Honest Day's Work Until taking up residence at a Seattle-area federal detention centre this summer, 30-year-old Francis Devandra Raj, like many Indo-Canadians his age, lived with his parents at their Surrey, B.C., home. His father has owned an autobody shop for 30 years. Francis chose a different path. "Raj is no stranger to danger," says Pat Fogarty, an inspector with British Columbia's Organized Crime Agency, and the officer in charge of an investigative team of the province's Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. Raj had a criminal history for marijuana possession and immigration violations. Investigators with the Canadian Border Services Agency kept watch, suspecting he might be involved in the cross-border drug trade. [continues 1895 words]
It's Got To Be Organic, And If You're Not Using An $800 Vaporizer To Inhale... Where wine is concerned, there is much to know. Even the actor Paul Giamatti, who played a wine connoisseur in last year's hit movie Sideways, reportedly didn't know that the chianti he ordered at lunch during filming would be red. Legions of drinkers pore over the subject as if fact-gathering itself were the addiction. And so it is with another of the world's most popular intoxicants: marijuana. [continues 882 words]
Parents Are Smoking Dope With Their Kids. What Are They Thinking? "It was a little weird, seeing my parents stoned," Tom confesses. The Toronto high school student was describing the first time he'd smoked marijuana -- at home last spring, just after turning 17, when he shared a joint with his hard-working, middle-class parents. "But I had an amazing, fantastic connection with my dad, and it was a good experience for all of us. They showed me how to take the seeds and stems out of the pot. Then, basically, we ate. [continues 3684 words]
The Drug Became Known As 'Hillbilly Heroin': A High-Powered Opiate Readily Available in the Woods of Rural America "Hillbilly heroin" was the name that stuck, but there's mounting evidence to suggest OxyContin's fan base reaches far beyond the Ozarks. Police in both the U.S. and Canada are uncovering increasing numbers of OxyContin trafficking rings in metropolitan centres, while big-city doctors are accused of writing fake prescriptions for the painkiller. And -- as with practically anything you shoot or snort -- celebrity abusers are helping push the drug into the spotlight. [continues 229 words]
Illicit Trade in the Painkiller OxyContin Is Bringing Crime, Addiction - and Death - to the Atlantic Provinces THE 10-MINUTE TRIP from Donkin, N.S., to downtown Glace Bay is the kind even locals seldom tire of driving. The narrow, seaside highway winds through one of those postcard stretches of coastal Cape Breton, among churches and cemeteries and shoebox houses that seem to cling to the hills above the water. But when Morley Prendergast drove it during his last year of high school, he rarely noticed the sights. [continues 2054 words]
According To A New Poll, Only 15 Per Cent Of Us Would Vote For The President Maybe it's that smug little smile. His penchant for fantastically expensive military photo-ops. Or the swaggering, belt-hitching walk that cries out for a pair of swinging saloon doors. And though, God knows, we have too many of our own syntactically challenged politicians to be casting stones, shouldn't the leader of the free world know that "misunderestimate" isn't a word? Yes, we're cavilling, but clearly there is something about George W. Bush that gets under the skin of Canadians. After all, vehemently disagreeing with the policies of American presidents is almost a national pastime. [continues 1779 words]
Non-Fiction Writers Pour Their Hearts Into Topics That Matter To Them -- And To Us By its very nature, Canadian non-fiction can never offer the thematic unity often found in CanLit. But every year writers pour as much passion as any novelist or poet -- and considerable literary skill -- into topics that matter to them. The best also deserve our consideration. Some recent highlights: Passion is certainly the defining emotion of Alan Young's Justice Defiled. A Toronto law professor, criminal lawyer, media commentator and self-proclaimed defender of "hookers, druggies, gamblers and minor criminals," Young calls his book a "professional suicide note." (He may well be right about that, considering he takes as his guiding light the famous declaration of Shakespeare's Dick the Butcher: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.") Young's tone of moral outrage never wavers. There are far too many lawyers, he argues, precisely because the Criminal Code is obscenely bloated. Why, asks Young, does the code contain a section on "theft in general" and 59 other sections on specific types, including "theft from oyster beds?" It is, in fact, ridiculously easy to become a criminal in Canada: simply get caught waterskiing at night. That might be dangerous and even negligent, but it would be better dealt with through bylaw regulation than the same array of legal procedure as an accusation of murder. [continues 556 words]
