Re: "Up the charges," Letter, Jan. 3. What an incredibly novel idea! Let's subject illegal drug vendors to harsh jail sentences. Oh, wait! The U.S. already does that, resulting in part in one of the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world. It has certainly solved their illegal drug seller problem. Just ask the Mexicans! Mark Botkin, Calgary [end]
The number is 841,348; that's 50.13 percent of the voters - a difference of 4,340 people. They said yes, they wanted medical marijuana. They followed the rules. The governor doesn't, so, she doesn't. Is that how government works now? I hope the 50.13 percent are writing and telling their governor their expectations, again. Mike Templeton Mesa [end]
Re: "Injection sites our moral imperative" (Gazette, Dec. 29). Henry Aubin makes a very good suggestion in calling for a public discussion in which both the benefits of supervised injection programs and public concerns about these innovative programs can be fully aired. It is important that the discussion be informed by the considerable experience in Canada and internationally with supervised injection sites. These programs have been a part of addiction services in many European countries since the mid-1980s; they were established in response to conditions very similar to those that exist in Montreal: drug-overdose deaths, HIV transmission among injection drug users, public drug use and the desire to help those with addictions to get treatment. [continues 211 words]
Jeanette Peterson and Kirk Buffalo live more than 3,600 kilometres apart, almost on opposite ends of the country. Yet the two are connected by their desire to improve their respective First Nations communities. Ms. Peterson is the newly elected Chief of Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley reserve, while Mr. Buffalo is a new Councillor at the Samson Cree band on central Alberta's Hobbema reserve. Chief Peterson wants to bring financial accountability to her tiny community of 112 people, while Councillor Buffalo is attempting to clean up his community of 3,000, which has been plagued by murders, drive-by shootings, gang activity and drug dealing. [continues 843 words]
Re: "Safe injection sites: yes or no?" (Your Views, Dec. 30). In her letter to the editor, Lorraine Hodgson refers three times to injection drug users as "criminals." I suggest that it would be more useful to think of these individuals as someone's son, daughter, brother, sister or co-worker. Katherine Tweedie Montreal [end]
Dear Editor, 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. All they can do is measure how much electricity has gone through them, and they only get checked manually every couple of months (long after the opportunity to catch electricity thieves has passed). [continues 95 words]
A group of B.C. public health officers has joined a growing coalition of policy leaders urging the legalization and taxation of marijuana. The Health Officers Council of B.C. voted to endorse Stop the Violence B.C. and called for regulation of illegal substances like marijuana to reduce the harm from substance use and the unintended consequences of government policies. "The Health Officer's Council and other experts are not saying that marijuana should be legalized and taxed because it is safe," said Dr. Paul Hasselback, a Vancouver Island medical health officer who chairs the council. "We are saying that proven public health approaches should be used to constrain its use. There is now more danger to the public's health in perpetuating a market driven by criminal activity." [continues 145 words]
Editor: More than $100 million worth of electricity is stolen from BC Hydro every year, with much of it powering marijuana grow-ops. As an honest BC Hydro customer, it makes me unhappy to know that people are stealing electricity. 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 can't do that. I doubt people are still using the same appliances, that were around in the 1940s, so why would anyone want to use metering technology from 60 years ago? Mike Taylor, Port Moody, B.C. [end]
To the Editor, Re: B.C. public health officers behind taxing, legalizing marijuana, Jan. 3. The Health Officers Council of British Columbia has taken a bold step by urging political leaders to take control of the cannabis trade. Organized crime now has a monopoly on a $7-billion clandestine trade which spawns violence, murder and unsafe communities. Every objective outcome measure shows us how badly prohibitionist policies have failed to reach their declared goals. Today, marijuana is stronger in potency, more widely used by young people, and easier to obtain despite decades of repressive laws and enforcement tactics. [continues 166 words]
The Gardner key to understanding Stephen Harper's federalism is heroin. Got your attention? Good. The word "federalism" tends to put people to sleep, but this is important stuff so I'll try to sex it up. Hence, heroin. There's lots of it in Vancouver's benighted downtown eastside, as there has been for decades. Law enforcement and social services tried everything they could think of to get rid of the drugs and the crime and the social blights. But things only got worse. [continues 915 words]
Good lord, our local newspaper believes that the lax attitudes about drug use among a cabal of community leaders is the cause of all the drug-related ills of Down-town Eastside. This outlandish theory has little evidence to support it. The Down-town Eastside is tolerant of a wide range of behaviours. But, believe me, the residents and some of these same leaders in the Downtown Eastside were some of the first to sound the alarm back in 1993 when 200 citizens of Vancouver died of drug overdoses. [continues 113 words]
Harm reduction is only one element of what we can do to improve the health of people who misuse drugs, legal or illegal. The real problem with spending aimed at fixing the "drug problem" in our society is not the very small amount spent on harm reduction. It's the hundreds and hundreds of millions spent on futile efforts to suppress the drug trade and punish users. In Vancouver, research on injection drug use has shown clearly that supplying clean equipment also creates a link between health workers and addicts and a door to detox and other treatment ser-vices. In any event, the crack kit project is a pilot. Let's see if it works before taking an ideological stance. John Carsley, Vancouver [end]
The proscription of marijuana because it has no medicinal use is an unreasonable and unnecessary regulation of my fundamental rights to privacy, to liberty and to property, and contravenes the Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendments ("Off Schedule," Medical MJ, Dec. 8). For marijuana laws to be reasonable and necessary, there must be a victim who has suffered injury to their rights. The private use of marijuana by an adult does not threaten the rights of others. The proscription of marijuana is property discrimination and deprivation of rights under the color of law, without due process of law. Due process applies not only to the reasonable operation of law, but also the reasonableness of the law. Michael Dee [end]
The narrow approval of a residency bylaw at Samson Cree Nation sends a mixed message from the troubled central Alberta reserve. Only 29 per cent of eligible band members voted in Wednesday's referendum and just 56 per cent of the 849 ballots cast were in favour of the bylaw that would allow for the eviction of any person deemed to be causing danger to the health or safety of the community. Those numbers suggest there is clear opposition in that community of 7,500 to this controversial new approach for addressing the pervasive problems of drug use and gun violence on the reserve. [continues 402 words]
