Don't endanger yourself with dope: cannabis

Monday, November 30, 2009 | | 0 comments

November 28, 2009
 
LIKE it or not, more than two million Australians will smoke cannabis in the next 12 months.

Research from Australia and across the world shows no clear relationship between the number of people using cannabis and the severity of penalties for cannabis offenders. So, what practical steps can be taken to try to reduce harm from cannabis?

In June the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre released first-aid guidelines for problem cannabis use. These were designed to help the community identify and assist users who are developing a problem with their cannabis use or are in a cannabis-related crisis.

The guidelines provide tips for effective communication with people experiencing problems. Some sensible advice is also offered about what to do if the cannabis user with problems does not want any help.

Most people prefer to manage their own drug use and, should they develop problems, manage these themselves.

Why not try to help people using cannabis try to avoid problems in the first place?

For many years Australia has had National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines to help drinkers reduce the harm from alcohol. But we have never had any official guidelines for people using cannabis that could help them do so more safely.

As Australia has one of the world's highest rates of cannabis use, it seems sensible to offer realistic guidelines to help users reduce potential harm.

A group of us recently gathered in the northern NSW town of Nimbin to develop guidelines for people using cannabis.

The group included Ann Symonds, a former member of the NSW Legislative Council as well as a grandmother, along with many local residents who have used cannabis heavily for many years but were keen to reduce their risks. We decided to call these the Nimbin Health and Medical Research Committee cannabis guidelines.

Our Nimbin guidelines make it clear that the form of cannabis use with the lowest health, social, legal and economic risk is abstinence. But, recognising that people will choose to use the drug regardless, we outlined ways to minimise harm.

Social cannabis users are recommended to consume cannabis only moderately, that is for five days a week or less, trying to keep at least two days each week cannabis-free. Cannabis smokers are advised to not exceed four joints a day. This advice resembles some of the NHMRC guidelines for alcohol.

As cannabis is illegal and possession or use can lead to severe legal and social consequences, cannabis users are advised to be discreet and never carry more than the caution amount, which varies from one state or territory to another.

Those concerned that cannabis may be seriously affecting their life in important areas such as relationships, child-rearing, job or finances are advised to consider reducing or stopping consumption of the drug. Young people considering experimenting with cannabis are advised to delay this until their body and mind have matured, and to be moderate and responsible.

Cannabis smokers should avoid smoking in the presence of children and in confined areas with non-smokers present. Adults should never forget that they serve as role models for the young.

As the potency and contaminants of different strains may vary widely, cannabis users consuming a new batch are advised to try a small quantity first.

Women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or likely to become pregnant soon are advised to refrain from using cannabis. Those who nevertheless choose use cannabis are advised to minimise usage in terms of quantity as well as frequency.

It is recommended that cannabis consumers allow at least a few hours between their last use of cannabis and driving a car or operating heavy machinery. Those consuming alcohol and cannabis should allow twice as long.

People who have had a serious mental illness or have a family history of serious mental illness are advised to avoid cannabis and other powerful mood altering drugs. Those still keen to use cannabis are advised to minimise their use and avoid smoking cannabis on their own.

Mixing tobacco and cannabis increases risks and should be avoided. As smoke harms lungs, inhaling the vapour from a vaporiser or eating foods made with cannabis is less damaging than inhaling cannabis smoke. Eating cannabis has less predictable effects than inhaling.

Plastic bottles, rubber hoses, PVC, aluminium or foil, when used to smoke cannabis, may give off toxic fumes while hot. Health risks are lower with a pipe made from glass, steel or brass.

Our Nimbin guidelines note that sharing smoking equipment such as joints, pipes or bongs can spread infections. It is safer if smoking equipment is not shared and is cleaned after every use.

To protect the environment and minimise the risk of starting a fire, all smoking implements, waste or roaches should be carefully and responsibly discarded.

As with the NHMRC guidelines for alcohol, our cannabis guidelines will be revised as additional information becomes available.

Isn't it time we all got real about cannabis?

Alex Wodak is a physician, director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney and president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation.

www.hempembassy.net/safercannabisuseguidelines.html

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As it Happens

Thursday, November 26, 2009 | | 0 comments

Hear the CBC interview with dr evan wood on the drug situation in Vancouver - attached.

We Need 21st-Century Law

| | 0 comments

Ottawa Citizen
24 November 2009

OPED:
We Need 21st-Century Law

James Morton, Citizen Special*

Canada's Approach To Fighting Crime Was Developed In A Rural, Ethnically Uniform Society That No Longer Exists

In the early 1890s, Canada was a nation of fewer than five million people. Over 70 per cent of Canadians lived in Quebec or Ontario. The church played a significant and direct role in civic life, and virtually the entire population was Christian. Ethnic populations were, apart from First Nations, effectively non-existent. Urban areas were small:
Toronto in 1890 had a population about the same size as Sherbrooke, Que., in 2009. More than nine in 10 Canadians lived in rural areas.

The Criminal Code was enacted in 1892. It was a careful attempt by leading criminal specialists to codify British law as applied in Canada in 1890. Despite amendments following a Royal Commission in 1947 ( passed in 1953 ), the Criminal Code was never fundamentally revised. A modern Canadian lawyer would immediately recognize the 1892 Criminal Code as being, in the main, the same Criminal Code as applies in Canada today.

This history is relevant largely because the Criminal Code was written in the 19th century by leading criminal lawyers considering the best law for a rural, ethnically uniform and fundamentally Christian nation. The Criminal Code is very much a piece of the 19th century, assuming that potential offenders are rational actors who would weigh their present actions against the likelihood of future punishment and social disgrace.
Deterrence was assumed to work. Prisons were assumed to reform criminals.

Of course, the Canada of 1892 no longer exists. Fewer than one in 20 Canadians live in rural areas. In many urban centres, the concept of a visible minority has lost relevance; there is no group that obviously qualifies as the majority. The power of the church in civic life is long gone and many Canadians fail to see a criminal record as amounting to a significant social stigma.

The concept of the criminal as rational actor has been found to be in error ( except perhaps for white collar criminals ). Mental illness is widespread through the criminal system. Drug abuse and psychiatric disorders are such common precursors of crime as to make the concept of the typical criminal as rational actor deterred by punishment absurd.

Prisons do not reform; at best they separate dangerous people from society. In 1999, researchers at the University of New Brunswick examined 50 studies on recidivism that covered more than 300,000 offenders. Considering other factors -- such as an inmate's criminal background and age -- they found that the longer people spent in jail, the more likely they were to commit another crime when they got out.
Indeed, one conclusion of the study was that prisons serve as schools for crime.

Our Criminal Code is based on a society that no longer exists and assumptions that, if ever true, are clearly false today. Now that does not mean we have to abandon trying to control crime, but it does mean that it is time to look again at how we deter crime.

Is crime really best dealt with by prisons? In some cases -- white collar crime -- probably yes, but in other cases, as with most drug related crime, probably not. Should we use mental health treatment as a basis for dealing with crime? Perhaps, but there are some criminals who cannot be rehabilitated and who must be separated from society; those criminals need to be in prisons or in functional equivalents. Should we assimilate quasi criminal/administrative law into true criminal law?
Certainly society's revulsion at crimes of personal violence is greater than, say, environmental offences, but those environmental offences may injure far more people than a simple assault. Should we replace the entire system of adversarial court battle with something closer to a prosecuting magistrate? Perhaps; there are issues of fairness and the appearance of justice. But is, say, the law of France grossly unfair?

All these issues should be open to consideration under an evidence-based approach.

We are at a unique junction politically in Canada. All major parties support criminal justice reform. The goal of a just and safer Canada is shared by all public figures and there is the political will to make change.

The Conservative party's crime legislation has been supported by the Liberal party. Criminal justice is a major part of the Conservative party's platform. The Liberal party is holding a major "thinkers'
conference" in January to consider policy approaches for the future; such a conference in the early 1960s led to the modern Divorce Act and could lead to similar radical readjustments in the criminal law.
Changes to the criminal law that were politically unthinkable just a few years ago are being debated in the House and Senate.

The goal of the criminal justice system is to prevent crime and to justify society where crime has occurred. Now is the right time to revisit the Criminal Code in light of those goals.


* James Morton is the deputy chair of the Council of Presidents of the Liberal Party of Canada and a past president of the Ontario Bar Association. He is adjunct faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School and practises with Steinberg Morton Hope & Israel LLP. The views expressed are solely his own.

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in the news

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URHI Drug Report

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 | | 0 comments

 
The URHI report is attached....
 
 
 
 war against drugs has failed to prevent a steep increase in the use of crack cocaine and crystal methamphetamine in Vancouver in the last 10 years, according to a study released Tuesday.

Researchers also found continued easy access to the highly addictive drugs and a high mortality rate among needle users because of HIV infection.

The study was done by the Urban Health Research Initiative at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

Drug-user HIV rate still high

The authors told a Vancouver news conference there has been a dramatic reduction in the sharing of syringes and in drug-injection rates, but a high mortality rate remained because of long-term HIV infection.

One expert involved in the research said harm-reduction programs work but they need to be expanded.

"Namely, the supervised injection facility," Dr. Evan Wood said. "But also … we need a greater dialogue about inhalation facilities."

Advocates of supervised drug-taking centres such as the InSite injection facility on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside have argued for a similar site for the safe use of cocaine.

Call for return of four-pillar policy

The high mortality rate for HIV-infected people, Wood said, is the price paid for past inaction.

Ottawa should never have abandoned the four-pillars approach, a policy adopted by the City of Vancouver in 2001. The policy named prevention, treatment, enforcement and harm reduction as the keys to successfully dealing with the use of street drugs.

"That massive undertaking was thrown out the window," Wood said. "From a scientific perspective, that is a massive flushing of taxpayers' dollars down the toilet."

Wood said police must exercise their enforcement role but criminalizing users and arresting traffickers — who are simply replaced by others — has not proved to be the answer.

Vancouver Courier for MAPS' Canadian MDMA/PTSDstudy

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News on the Vancouver MDMA (ecstasy) study

"It should be pursued, we've got to try everything, and Rick Doblin's a very convincing guy," Owen said.

http://www2.canada.com/vancouvercourier/news/story.html?id=9476d708-dc00-4c7d-a26d-5f1377c52d85

Therapists tout ecstasy as treatment for stress disorder Cheryl Rossi, Vancouver Courier
Published: Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The use of LSD and mind-altering states has convinced two local therapists that MDMA-also known was the street drug ecstasy-could help people suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder. Psychiatrist Ingrid Pacey and psychologist Andrew Feldmar aim to study whether MDMA-assisted therapy could benefit people who've tried traditional counselling and drug treatment with little relief.

The U.S.-based non-profit sponsoring the study, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic studies, or MAPS, and the Metro Vancouver therapists have received two of four approvals they need to proceed.
Health Canada and an independent review board have given approvals, but eight months on, Pacey's waiting for an exemption under Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to distribute the drug. The pharmacist involved with the study needs to be granted a licence to import the drug from a Swiss university.

Twelve participants, including people who've suffered childhood sexual or physical abuse or a traumatizing incident as an adult, will take part in the double-blind study that will include three two-day sessions with MDMA and regular psychotherapy for up to five months. At least 20 individuals have volunteered, and the research team hopes to recruit police officers, firefighters and military personnel to participate.

"We even had a phone call from a flight attendant," Pacey said.
Participants' symptoms will be measured with standard psychological testing. The MDMA will be administered at the start of a two-day session with participants staying overnight in Pacey's West Side office. Their vital signs will be monitored. Eight people will be given a full dose of MDMA and four will receive a small dose. After the sessions are complete their symptoms will be reassessed and those who were given the small dose of the drug will have the option of trying therapy with the full dose.

Researchers interested in the use of MDMA believe the drug could help quiet a patient's nervous system and allow them to look at the big picture of what happened to them with more compassion and empathy for themselves and others. Pacey said a similar American study has reported encouraging results but the findings have not been published.

MAPS is sponsoring similar studies in Switzerland, Israel and Jordan. It previously sponsored a study to evaluate whether the grade of MDMA to be used would hurt participants psychologically or physically in controlled situations and found no damage. Pacey says widely reported studies on the damaging effects of ecstasy involved giving massive doses of the drugs to rats. She said some reported results were later retracted.
Pacey noted that healing through altered mental states is common to many cultures with the use of drumming, chanting, staying up all night and fasting.

The researchers expect they'll need $330,000 to complete the study. They raised $10,000 at an Oct. 24 benefit attended by medical professionals and advocates for drug policy reform, including former NPA mayor Philip Owen. Owen attended because he met MAPS's founder Rick Doblin earlier this month at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Mexico. He leant his support to the MDMA study with a donation.

"It should be pursued, we've got to try everything, and Rick Doblin's a very convincing guy," Owen said.

in the news

| | 0 comments



Vancouver hard-drug use up: study
CBC News
November 24, 2009

in the news

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 | | 0 comments


Pioneer heroin study in jeopardy in Quebec
By Andrew Chung
The Toronto Star
November 23, 2009

in the news

Monday, November 23, 2009 | | 0 comments

 


Medical Marijuana: No Longer Just for Adults
By Katherine Ellison
New York Times
November 22, 2009

 

FW: Support for legalizing marijuana grows rapidly around U.S.

| | 0 comments

The Washington Post
Monday, November 23, 2009

Support for legalizing marijuana grows rapidly around U.S.

Approval for medical use expands alongside criticism of prohibition

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer

The same day they rejected a gay marriage ballot measure, residents of Maine voted overwhelmingly to allow the sale of medical marijuana over the counter at state-licensed dispensaries.

Later in the month, the American Medical Association reversed a longtime position and urged the federal government to remove marijuana from Schedule One of the Controlled Substances Act, which equates it with heroin and cocaine.

A few days later, advocates for easing marijuana laws left their biannual strategy conference with plans to press ahead on all fronts -- state law, ballot measures, and court -- in a movement that for the first time in decades appeared to be gaining ground.

"This issue is breaking out in a remarkably rapid way now," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Public opinion is changing very, very rapidly."

The shift is widely described as generational. A Gallup poll in October found 44 percent of Americans favor full legalization of marijuana -- a rise of 13 points since 2000. Gallup said that if public support continues growing at a rate of 1 to 2 percent per year, "the majority of Americans could favor legalization of the drug in as little as four years."

A 53 percent majority already does so in the West, according to the survey. The finding heartens advocates collecting signatures to put the question of legalization before California voters in a 2010 initiative.

At last week's International Drug Reform Conference, activists gamed specific proposals for taxing and regulating pot along the lines of cigarettes and alcohol, as a bill pending in the California Legislature would do. The measure is not expected to pass, but in urging its serious debate, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) gave credence to a potential revenue source that the state's tax chief said could raise $1.3 billion in the recession, which advocates describe as a boon.

There were also tips on lobbying state legislatures, where measures decriminalizing possession of small amounts have passed in 14 states.
Activists predict half of states will have laws allowing possession for medical purposes in the near future.

Interest in medical marijuana and easing other marijuana laws picked up markedly about 18 months ago, but advocates say the biggest surge came with the election of Barack Obama, the third straight president to acknowledge having smoked marijuana, and the first to regard it with anything like nonchalance.

"As a kid, I inhaled," Barack Obama famously said on the campaign. "That was the whole point."

In office, Obama made good on a promise to halt federal prosecutions of medical marijuana use where permitted by state law. That has recalibrated the federal attitude, which had been consistently hostile to marijuana since the early 1970s, when President Richard Nixon cast aside the recommendations of a presidential commission arguing against lumping pot with hard drugs.

Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he was astonished recently to be invited to contribute thoughts to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Obama's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, was police chief in Seattle, where voters officially made enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest priority.

"I've been thrown out of the ONDCP many times," St. Pierre said. "Never invited to actually participate."

Anti-drug advocates counter with surveys showing high school students nationwide already are more likely to smoke marijuana than tobacco -- and that the five states with the highest rate of adolescent pot use permit medical marijuana.

"We are in the prevention business," said Arthur Dean, chairman of the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. "Kids are getting the message tobacco's harmful, and they're not getting the message marijuana is."

In Los Angeles, city officials are dealing with elements of public backlash after more than 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries opened, some employing in-house physicians to dispense legal permission to virtually all comers. The boom town atmosphere brought complaints from some neighbors, but little of the crime associated with underground drug-dealing.

Advocates cite the latter as evidence that, as with alcohol, violence associated with the marijuana trade flows from its prohibition.

"Seriously," said Bruce Merkin, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group based in the District, "there is a reason you don't have Mexican beer cartels planting fields of hops in the California forests."

But the controversy over the dispensaries also has put pressure on advocates who specifically champion access for ailing patients, not just those who champion easing marijuana laws.

"I don't want to say we keep arm's length from the other groups. You end up with all of us in the same room," said Joe Elford, counsel for Americans for Safe Access, which has led the court battle for medical marijuana and is squaring off with the Los Angeles City Council. "It's a very broad-based movement."
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Evan Wood will be speaking at the Pivot AGM - all welcome!

Friday, November 20, 2009 | | 0 comments

all are welcome.....
 
Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.
[]
 

 

Pivot Annual General Meeting

Featuring guest speaker Dr. Evan Wood presenting on drug policy, harm reduction and crack cocaine use.

All welcome!
 
Where: 112 West Hastings Street
When: November 25, 2009 at 6:30 p.m.
Who: All members and interested members of the public are welcome

Cost: Free

2009 board member elections will take place following Dr. Woods talk. Interested candidates for the Board should contact jrichardson@pivotlegal.com .

Members are hereby notified that at the AGM, proposed amendments to Pivot Legal Societys bylaws will be forwarded to create the positions of Honourary Director and "Founding Director". Text of the amendments will be available at the meeting, and in advance of the meeting on request.

TITLE OF PRESENTATION:

The Drug Situation in Vancouver: Reality, perception and policy

In North America and around the world, the primary approach to controlling illicit drug use has been through law enforcement. However, a large body of scientific evidence demonstrates the limitations and harmful consequences of this approach. Despite the scientific evidence to the contrary, policy-makers continue to place ever increasing emphasis and public resources on law enforcement models. This talk will describe the discordance between research and policy and discuss the need for greater public discourse regarding alternative models for reducing drug-related harm.  In particular, Evan will discuss recent developments in the issue of harm reduction and crack cocaine use.

[] Evan Wood MD, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Division of AIDS at the University of British Columbia and Director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. Dr. Woods has extensive research experience in the area of clinical epidemiology, especially in evaluating the treatment of HIV/AIDS among injection drug users, and epidemiologic study design especially in evaluating HIV prevention interventions. Dr Wood was the founding principal investigator of North Americas first medically supervised safer injecting facility and is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Drug Policy.

 
Pivots mandate is to take a strategic approach to social change, using the law to address the root causes that undermine the quality of life of those most on the margins. We believe that everyone, regardless of income, benefits from a healthy and inclusive community where values such as opportunity, respect and equality are strongly rooted in the law.

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The Dutch Smoke Less Pot

| | 0 comments

One of those inconvenient truths

CBC looking for polling questions

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Subject: CANADA: Re: [CCC] CBC looking for polling questions

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sent this and suggest that as many people as possible send the same or a variation of it to CBC.

"Should the government of Canada repeal marijuana prohibition and replace it with a legal, regulated and taxed system of production and distribution to adult consumers?"

Kirk Tousaw, Executive Director
Beyond Prohibition Foundation
142 - 757 West Hastings, Suite 211
Vancouver BC V6C 1A1
Cell: 604.836.1420
kirktousaw@gmail.com
www.whyprohibition.ca

Working to repeal cannabis prohibition and replace it with a regulated and controlled system of production and access.

>
> http://www.cbc.ca/politics/insidepolitics/2009/11/power-politics-your-poll.html#socialcomments
>
>
>
>
>
> Many Canadians have had the chance to answer questions in a public
> opinion poll. Now we'd like to give you the chance to put your
> questions to a pollster.
>
> Submit your question to politics@cbc.ca and it could be selected as
> part of the EKOS Research poll released exclusively to the CBC.
>
> From the monarchy to H1N1 and climate change to the economy,
> Canadians have many opinions about the major issues of the day.
>
> The results of the polls will be presented on Power & Politics with
> Evan Solomon.
>
>
>
> The number one question that people want polled........
>
> Entry comments (62)
>
>
>
> northcrunk wrote:Posted 2009/11/05 at 3:51 PM ET
>
>
>
> Should marijuana be legalized and regulated just like alcohol and
> tobacco?
>
>
>
> 101 Agree
> 27 Disagree
>
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Accept the facts - and end this futile 'war on drugs'

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 | | 0 comments

http://tinyurl.com/ykdpv9h

FW: THIS Magazine: Crack down on organized crime and save addicts - Legalize Hard Drugs

| | 0 comments

Crack down on organized crime and save addicts - Legalize Hard Drugs

http://this.org/magazine/2009/11/11/legalize-drugs/

By Katie Addleman

Crack down on organized crime and save addicts - Legalize Hard Drugs

By Katie Addleman

Shortly after Vancouver was named the host of the 2010 Olympics, Naomi Klein was seething about injustice again. "The Vancouver-Whistler Olympic bid presented the province of British Columbia as a model of harmonious, sustainable living, a place where everyone gets along," she wrote in 2003.
After 9-11, the city had sold itself to the International Olympic Committee as the "Safety and Security Candidate...a place where nothing ever happens."
It was a false image, and Klein feared that the darker realities of life in B.C. would remain unexposed to the international community. She needn't have worried. Six years later, just as the world was turning an eye on Vancouver in advance of the coming Olympic carnival, the city was full of guns. The murder rate between January and March was unprecedented: 47 shootings, 19 of them fatal-twice as many as five years previous. The U.K.'s Sunday Times ran an article calling Vancouver "Murder City." Vancouver police chief Jim Chu summed up the situation for a panicking public: "There is a gang war, and it's brutal."

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime released its 2009 World Drug Report in late June, naming the west coast of Canada as a hub of the international drug trade and B.C.'s organized crime groups as largely responsible. By this time, the violence had died down and not much attention was paid to connecting this new information about B.C.'s pivotal role in world drug traffic and the war that Chu had identified three months earlier. The link between gang warfare, the manufacture and export of illicit drugs, and the fact of those drugs' very illegality was, meanwhile, barely mentioned at all.

After years of attacking the symptoms of the (increasingly ludicrously
named) "war on drugs," it's time to stop and consider what would actually end the murders, gang wars, smuggling, petty arrests, and drug-related deaths that afflict us. The answer is to attack the root of the problem:
prohibition itself.
What level of substance regulation do you support?
Total Prohibition
Ban tobacco, sell alcohol
Status quo: legal sale of alcohol and tobacco Legalize marijuana but not harder drugs Legalize cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, etc.
Other:
VoteView Results
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In October 2007, six men were found dead in an apartment in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Surrey. The 48 investigators charged with solving the crime appealed to the public and the victims' families, asking for any information that could lead to arrests. It was obvious to everyone that four of these six murders weren't random. The two remaining victims had been caught in the crossfire and killed accidentally. These were executions. Vancouver had long supported a substantial criminal economy, but the case of the Surrey Six marked the beginning of a precipitous rise in gang-related violence. In the months that followed, the headlines of local papers became increasingly macabre; by the time I arrived in Vancouver at the end of 2008, I felt I'd landed in Gotham City: Three Slayings Within 24 Hours, the papers screamed; Man Gunned Down in East Vancouver; Grieving Mom Begs for Public's Help; Four Fatal Shootings Lead Cops to Expect More. At the beginning of 2009, one year before the Olympics would make Vancouver the focus of every news outlet in the world, people were being shot on a nearly daily basis.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded with the hardline approach typical of conservative politics: more convictions, longer sentences. The proposed legislation called for more of the same, its coup de grâce being a mandate that all gang-related killings be called first-degree murder and carry minimum jail terms of 25 years. Harper announced his proposal in Vancouver at the end of February, affecting a "we'll take care of it" demeanour that aimed to calm the public and the international media, who were now swarming on the story of Gangland Vancouver. There was nothing to worry about, he said. The escalating violence shouldn't concern those planning to attend the 2010 Olympic Games. (They'd install 15,000 police officers, working morning to night!) Later that day, Cory Stephen Konkin, 30, was shot in his car in Maple Ridge. He was followed by four more murder victims in the five days that followed.

"They have to appear to be doing something," says Jerry Paradis of the Harper government's fledgling recourse. "They can't just admit they are at a loss on how to deal with the issue." Paradis, who served as a judge on the Provincial Court of British Columbia between 1975 and 2003, has become an outspoken critic of governments' law and order policies, and particularly their proven ineffectiveness in preventing gang violence. He points to the various "task forces" that have been created and re-created over the years as examples of this failure-when one proves ineffectual, it is replaced by another that looks remarkably similar: the Integrated Gang Task Force, implemented in 2004, was followed in 2007 by the Violence Suppression Team.
The violence not having been suppressed, Premier Gordon Campbell is now allocating funds to identical squads in Kelowna and Prince George, to be developed over the next three years at a cost of $23 million per year.

Paradis points to the failed anti-gang measures of the United States, which bear a strong resemblance to those our own government would adopt. "The federal and many state penal systems that adopted mandatory minimums are withdrawing from that approach," he says. "In California, devotion to quick-fix measures like three-strikes laws and widespread minimums have nearly bankrupted the government, while having no perceptible effect on crime."

Why do we continually fall back on tactics that don't work? Aside from the share of votes garnered through "tough on crime" posturing, gangs are exceedingly problematic to combat. "Their airtight culture, their shifting alliances, and, most important, the fear they spread make gangs exceedingly difficult to successfully investigate and prosecute," says Paradis.
"Surveillance, infiltration, and intelligence seem to be the keys-and those can be extremely delicate and costly." No government in the world has the resources necessary to quash gang activity through these conventional means.
Policy makers need to put on their creative thinking caps, and then ready themselves for a revolution. The solution to the problem- legalization-is nothing if not divisive.

The concentration of violence was unprecedented in Vancouver. But gang violence is nothing new; gangs are volatile entities, their hierarchies often disrupted by death or imprisonment, their members sensitive to power fluctuations occurring in like organizations all over the globe. When a cartel boss flaps his wings in Mexico City, a typhoon of violence can erupt in Surrey, B.C. According to a study on organized crime in British Columbia prepared by the RCMP's Criminal Analysis Section in 2005, as of that year there were 108 street gangs operating in B.C. Today's estimates place the number higher, at 160. And it will continue to rise; there's money enough to support hundreds of these organizations. It's not hard to turn a dime when you're invested in the world's most lucrative market.

Michael C. Chettleburgh, a criminal policy consultant in Ottawa and Canada's foremost authority on street gangs, posits that gang life offers various attractions-camaraderie, protection, a shared sense of identity, power-but that the opportunity to make vast amounts of money is undoubtedly its primary allure. "The desire for money and the desire to make money quickly, by whatever means possible, are the combined drivers of street-gang activity," he writes. Street gangs derive their income from myriad illegal activities, but selling drugs is far and away their greatest profit source.
(Studies conducted by the RCMP, CSIS, and the Fraser Institute, among others, consistently produce findings to this effect.) Though the worth of any black market is impossible to calculate exactly, the UN puts the yearly value of the worldwide drug trade at somewhere between US$150 and US$400 billion. That's one-eighth of the world's international trade, according to UN studies. Only the textile industry yields similar gains.

"This kind of gang violence is always very cyclical," Const. David Bratzer told me in the measured, helpful tone of a schoolteacher, when I reached him at his home in Victoria and asked for his take on the current crisis. "It's related to control of the black market for drugs. A lot of times, when you see this kind of violence, it's because something has been destabilized: a leader's been arrested or shot, and now his subordinates or other groups are fighting to control that black market and all those tax-free profits."
Whether violence is up or down at a given moment is inconsequential; it will continue to rise and abate in endless waves as long as there are gangs, and there will be gangs as long as organized crime is profitable.

Still, in the early months of 2009, politicians and police were compelled to offer more pointed explanations for the latest explosion. Most spoke broadly of internal power struggles or disruptions to the drug supply, while some, like RCMP Supt. Pat Fogarty, placed the blame squarely on the ongoing Mexican drug war. None of this reasoning is invalid, but it skirts the larger truth: people were dying, and killing, for money. Or, more accurately, enough money to buy a country.

Ounce for ounce, marijuana is worth more than gold, and heroin more than uranium. Yet it's only as a direct result of international policy that drugs are so valuable; if they weren't illegal, they'd be worthless. Prohibition floats the drug trade by raising potential profits to astronomical levels, and the drug trade in turn floats the gangs who control it. "Because of ... their illegality and associated criminal sanctions," writes Chettleburgh, "those willing to trade in them-drug cartels, organized crime syndicates, so-called narco-terrorist groups and street gangs-can demand high prices and derive great profits."

Great profits is an understatement. Everything in the drug trade is profit.
Manufacturers, who buy from farmers, incur virtually no overhead. They're buying plants-weeds, in fact- that will grow nearly anywhere. From the point of production to the point of purchase, the value of their product can increase by as much as 17,000 percent. By contrast, the markup on retail goods is generally closer to 100 percent. This is what Canada, and all other governments who support prohibition policy, fail to grasp: drug dealing is a profession, and its potential earnings guarantee an endless supply of hopeful employees. Harsher criminal penalties haven't stopped it, and won't stop it, because the number of dealers will never diminish. Locking up one doesn't remove one from the street; it creates a job opening that hundreds of people are waiting to fill. In his wildest imaginings, Stephen Harper could not envision an effective deterrent to this fact.

"You're talking about a profession where people accept a risk of being murdered, execution-style, as an occupational hazard," said Bratzer. "How is a mandatory minimum sentence going to deter a person who already accepts the risk of being shot and having their body dumped in a car?"

In British Columbia, the marijuana trade alone accounts for five percent of the GDP, placing it alongside forestry and mining in economic significance.
It employs 250,000 people and is worth $7 billion annually. Police have busted thousands of grow-ops in eradication campaigns over the past 10 years, finding particular success with the Electric Fire Safety Initiative, a four-year-old project that partners B.C. Hydro with the fire department and the RCMP to track down growops through notable spikes in private electricity usage. Yet the industry continues to thrive. The number of plants in B.C. is actually proliferating; the RCMP estimates there are currently 20,000 province-wide. The webpage of the City of Richmond, B.C., includes helpful hints for landlords wishing to prevent their properties from becoming marijuana farms.

The Criminal Intelligence Service of British Columbia confirms "marijuana cultivation is the most pervasive and lucrative organized crime activity" in the province, but goes on to remind us that local methamphetamine production is nothing to pooh-pooh; it's making a strong push to the top, "expanding at a rate similar to the early growth of the marijuana industry." It's little wonder that the province can support so many gangs.

And while, in Chettleburgh's words, Canadians demonstrate a "robust interest" in consuming illicit drugs (a 2004 study by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse leaves little room for interpretation), it must be noted that 90 to 95 percent of the illegal drugs produced in Canada are eventually sold in external markets. This is not unique to Canada, but representative of the trade. The drug market is borderless, and links every crime ring in the world to every other: grow-ops in Canada are guarded by American guns, which are sold to Canadians to finance purchases of cocaine, which is sold to Mexicans by Colombian manufacturers, and then ferried across the border by American importers, who trade it with Canadians for B.C.-grown marijuana, who sell it for guns to protect their growops, ad infinitum. Variations on the model are unlimited; supply lines and products traded change along with profit margins, power structures, and government patrol barriers. What remains constant is a competitive economic system, controlled by people under immense pressure and concerned only with profit potential. Violence is the natural by-product of such a system-in Vancouver, in Phoenix, in Ciudad Juarez. It is a global problem.

Jack Cole is the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an international organization comprised of police chiefs and officers, former mayors and governors, criminal justice policy experts, MPs, retired senators and judges, and the former attorney general of Colombia, among others. Its mandate is to legitimize a fringe position on drug policy:
legalize. Legalize everything.

"I'd say this is about business as usual," Cole said of the violence raging from Mexico to Canada. We had finally gotten the chance to speak; Cole travels endlessly for LEAP, within the U.S. and internationally, presenting to professional, civic, religious, and governing bodies, including the UN, on the proven dangers of prohibition and the necessity of ending it. He estimates that he has given his speech, "End Prohibition Now," more than 800 times. The International Harm Reduction Association selected it as one of the world's finest documents on policing and harm reduction. Our conversation had been preceded by numerous emails. The last one, genial as always, concluded, "Attached are some of the things that would not exist if we had legalized regulation of drugs." I opened the attachment. It was an article from a recent issue of the London Telegraph. "Henchman of Mexican Drug Lord Dissolved 300 Bodies in Acid," read the headline. I didn't read any further. Cole's position was clear enough.

When we spoke the next day I was surprised by his tone: warm, patient, patently American. It made his pro-legalization talk all the more intriguing. "It was worse than this at given times in the past," he said.
"In Colombia, for instance. Most people weren't following it, but when you look at the number of people murdered in Colombia back in late '80s and early '90s ... I mean, the drug cartels actually attacked the federal courthouse, and for several days held hostages there. They killed a whole bunch of judges." For all of the apocalyptic talk at the beginning of the year, gang violence was not, internationally, the worst it had been-just the closest to home. "The fact of the matter is, that all this would end, it would all be over within a day, if we legalized and regulated these drugs,"
Cole said.

Not everyone agrees. Darryl Plecas, a professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Fraser Valley and the RCMP Research Chair in Crime Reduction, argues widely for continued prohibition and prosecution of producers and traffickers. "Things are changing, thanks very much, without a change in policy on prohibition," he told me when I reached him on the ferry from Vancouver Island to the mainland. "Cocaine, crystal meth-we wiped that problem off the planet. It's vanished. There were all kinds of people using meth, then there was an all-out assault [by government and law enforcement agencies]. What it takes is clever education." The UN World Drug Report naming Canada as one of the largest exporters of crystal meth had not yet been released at the time of our conversation.

Plecas, who has twice participated in the prestigious Oxford Round Table, an annual forum on public policy at Oxford University, also takes a moral stance against legalization, arguing the harmful effects of drugs on users and their communities. "Do we want to facilitate, condone that?" he asks.
When I put forward the standard argument that marijuana has proven less harmful than alcohol, he responds that there is "mounting medical evidence of the harms of marijuana use. Nobody's getting schizophrenia from drinking.
You can backtrack from alcoholism. You're not returning from schizophrenia."

This, in effect, is the centre of the prohibitionists' argument. Drugs are not just dangerous, but demonic; if they weren't, it would be very hard to justify their illegality. "People have, to some extent, been hoodwinked by the misinformation put out there by the prohibitionists," says Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist who has been studying the unintended consequences of prohibition for 15 years. "This is the claim that drug use is very, very horribly bad for you, the implication that it's always and necessarily bad for you, as opposed to the more accurate view that, like alcohol, dose makes a difference and lots of people can use in moderation and use responsibly,"
he says. "They don't seem to want to think about the fact that some people misuse alcohol and do stupid things, but millions of people don't misuse alcohol and use it in moderation. And they assume that somehow drugs would be different, that we would only get the extreme cases. But the evidence doesn't suggest that. I don't know why more people don't recognize that."

So while Plecas says prohibitionists "should get their moral compass out,"
Miron, Cole, and a growing number of politicians, economists, criminologists and police officers (particularly in the wake of President Obama's election to the White House, as the new administration is seen as more amenable to
logic) are putting forward the idea that legalization represents the most ethical solution to the drug problem. It is founded on a singular fact, irrefutable in the face of a century of gathered evidence: prohibition has made everything worse. From crime to corruption to instances of overdose, prohibition has left us less safe, sicker, and poorer than before, and all at tremendous expense. Governments everywhere have essentially spent billions ramping up social ills. It is one of the hideous ironies of our age.

As drugs and their use predate prohibition, the social implications of the policy can be easily traced. The first instance of anti-drug legislation in Canada was the Anti-Opium Act, passed in 1908. British Columbia was then roughly 20 percent Chinese. One year earlier, an anti-Asian riot had torn through Vancouver, and the practice of placing head taxes on Chinese immigrants, first instituted in 1884, was at its peak. The Anti-Opium Act was plainly born of racist sentiment masquerading as a public safety initiative, as drug use in general was hardly stigmatized during this period. Throughout the Victorian era, one could dabble in cocaine, morphine, and heroin, whether instructed to do so by a doctor or no (physicians regularly prescribed all three), without wandering outside the border of mainstream practice.

In his book Chasing Dragons: Security, Identity, and Illicit Drugs in Canada, author Kyle Grayson writes that "public disapproval of opium arose not from the effects of the drug itself, but rather from its association with a group perceived as biologically and culturally inferior." Opium was identified with Chinese immigrants and labourers, and, worse than that, with the corruption of white women at the hands of Chinese opium merchants. While other drugs were an acceptable good time, opium was foreign, un-Christian, and threatening. "It is important to remember that the publicly stated rationale for the Opium Act, the legislation that made further acts possible, did not have to do with the potentially harmful effects of opium.
Rather, it was based on reports of the narcotic's 'dire influence'-specifically, on reports that young white women had been found in an opium den."

By 1911, as Canadians were first starting to carve out a cultural identity, drug use of all kinds had begun to be seen as "improper," not "Canadian,"
and a symptom of moral deterioration. This new conception, spearheaded by culturally conservative journalists and politicians, led to the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act, a broader version of its predecessor, which included a clause permitting for the later addition of other drugs. In 1923, marijuana made the list. No reason was given. The trend continued, and the production, sale, and consumption of opium, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana were all eventually entirely criminalized, with other narcotics similarly banned as they appeared. The result? Just over 100 years after the misinformed creation of Canada's first drug law, production is up, usage is up, crime is up, prices and ill-gotten profits are up. Prohibition has had none of its intended effects, and has instead served its targets. There is a kind of poetic justice here: we've seen that prohibition was based on a bogus theory, and as befits all ill-founded practices, it failed demonstrably.

The solution is to end it. We've lost much to fear campaigns ("Drugs kill!") and plain delusion ("We can achieve a drug-free world!"), but the population can be re-educated. The majority of the Canadian public already supports legalized marijuana, but a 2009 Angus Reid Strategies poll indicates that only eight percent favour legalization of hard drugs. We are uneasy with the idea of the government supplying the public with drugs; there are too many attendant moral questions. But legalization, though not ideal, remains what the Economist calls the "least bad policy." The trouble will be getting the public to vocally support it, and finding politicians willing to stand for it. "There has to be some fundamental change in people's attitudes toward drugs," says Miron. "It's not obvious where that change will come from, unless a mainstream politician or a mainstream figure, a respected figure, stands up and says, 'This policy's idiotic.'"

Nowhere is the sale and production of drugs a legal activity. Prohibition remains a fact of life in every country in the world, but the decriminalization policies of some places- most notably Switzerland, Portugal, and the Netherlands-are so comprehensive as to give us an idea of what life in a drug-law-free zone might look like. The Swiss have been treating heroin as a health problem since 1994. There were 23 clinics in the country where addicts could go up to three times a day to inject government-supplied heroin in 2007. The drug is provided on a sliding monetary scale. If an addict can pay for it, he or she does; if not, it's free. The crime rate went down by 60 percent. Portugal shocked the international community and its own citizens when it decriminalized the possession of all drugs in 2001, becoming the first country in Europe to do so. A report published earlier this year by the Cato Institute, a U.S.-based think tank, concluded that the policy change had led to lowered instances of drug trafficking, sexually transmitted diseases, and overdose deaths, and an increase in the number of adults registered in addiction treatment programs.
In the Netherlands, where soft drugs have been all but legal since 1976, the per capita usage of marijuana and hash is half what it is the U.S. Studies also suggest that the Netherlands per capita usage of hard drugs and homicide rates are one-quarter less than those of the U.S.

While we don't have examples of successful legalization to look to, most policy makers, researchers, consultants, and activists envision it as combination of governmental drug production and distribution and harm-reduction initiatives. The government would manufacture the products, standardizing them for purity; supply them to the public in government-operated stores like the LCBO or B.C. Liquor. and use the profits from taxation to treat and ease addiction through rehabilitation programs and safe-injection sites. "There are lots of different ways it could be implemented," says Miron. "It could be implemented by medicalizing it, meaning change the rules so that medical provision was not much supervised, so doctors could prescribe relatively freely, in which case just as many people can go and get Prozac; if they go to a psychiatrist and act as though they need it, people will be able to go to doctors and say, 'My back hurts,'
or 'I have anxiety,' and be able to get prescriptions for morphine or methadone or marijuana or whatever. But it would still be open to the views of the enforcers about whether or not to allow wide-scale medical distribution. I think the better model is alcohol-sold by private companies, advertised, subject to age restrictions and some taxes, but just a legal commodity like anything else. There's no reason it has to be treated any differently than Starbucks or Budweiser."

Whatever the model we choose, drugs cannot continue to be treated as they are. We've avoided it as long as possible, but it's time to look the ethical maze in the mouth and navigate our way through it, because to continue to pretend that we can extricate ourselves from this war through the traditional crime-and-punishment avenues of the Canadian justice system is to continue to line the pockets of those who would slay us in Surrey, if only by accident.

in the news

| | 2 comments

 

Boomers see views relaxing on marijuana
Health, law enforcement officials bemoan greater public tolerance of drug
By Steve Hendrix

Washington Post
November 16, 2009

Can mind-altering drugs have mental health benefits?
New studies are testing whether psychedelic drugs such as LSD and MDMA can treat OCD, post traumatic stress and cancer related anxiety.
By Arran Frood
Telegraph (UK)
November 16, 2009

First U.S. marijuana cafe opens in Portland
By Dan Cook
Reuters
November 14, 2009

E

in the news

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 | | 0 comments

 


Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse Announces the Reappointment of Dr. Darryl Plecas to its Board of Directors (link to PDF, 2 pages)
Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse
News Release
November 10, 2009
 

 The other side of the war on drugs
By Jeff Ducharme
Telegraph-Journal
November 9, 2009 
 

 Should Pot Be Legal?
Part 1 : Of Point-Counterpoint Between Judge James Gray and Drug Free America Foundation's David Evans
CBS News
November 9, 2009

Drug slang: what police must learn A to B
Police officers are being issued with a list of almost 3,000 slang words and phrases associated with illegal drugs, in order to stay one step ahead of criminals. Here are letters A to B
By Jasper Copping
Telegraph (UK)
November 8, 2009
=Mark.Haden@vch.ca 

AMA Report Recognizes Medical Benefits of Marijuana, Urges Further Research

| | 0 comments

----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
> PRESS RELEASE
> Americans for Safe Access
> For Immediate Release: November 10, 2009
>
> AMA Report Recognizes Medical Benefits of Marijuana, Urges Further
> Research Largest and oldest U.S. physician-based group reverses
> long-held position on medical marijuana
>
> Houston, TX -- The American Medical Association (AMA) voted today to
> reverse its long-held position that marijuana be retained as a
> Schedule I substance with no medical value. The AMA adopted a report
> drafted by the AMA Council on Science and Public Health (CSAPH)
> entitled, "Use of Cannabis for Medicinal Purposes," which affirmed the
> therapeutic benefits of marijuana and called for further research. The
> CSAPH report concluded that, "short term controlled trials indicate
> that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and
> caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and
> may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis."
> Furthermore, the report urges that "the Schedule I status of marijuana
> be reviewed with the goal of facilitating clinical research and
> development of cannabinoid-based medicines, and alternate delivery
> methods."
>
> The change of position by the largest physician-based group in the
> country was precipitated in part by a resolution adopted in June of
> 2008 by the Medical Student Section (MSS) of the AMA in support of the
> reclassification of marijuana's status as a Schedule I substance. In
> the past year, the AMA has considered three resolutions dealing with
> medical marijuana, which also helped to influence the report and its
> recommendations. The AMA vote on the report took place in Houston,
> Texas during the organization's annual Interim Meeting of the House of
> Delegates. The last AMA position, adopted 8 years ago, called for
> maintaining marijuana as a Schedule I substance, with no medical
> value.
>
> "It's been 72 years since the AMA has officially recognized that
> marijuana has both already-demonstrated and future-promising medical
> utility,"
> said
> Sunil Aggarwal, Ph.D., the medical student who spearheaded both the
> passage of the June 2008 resolution by the MSS and one of the CSAPH
> report's designated expert reviewers. "The AMA has written an
> extensive, well-documented, evidence-based report that they are
> seeking to publish in a peer-reviewed journal that will help to
> educate the medical community about the scientific basis of botanical
> cannabis-based medicines."
> Aggarwal is
> also on the Medical & Scientific Advisory Board of Americans for Safe
> Access (ASA), the largest medical marijuana advocacy organization in
> the U.S.
>
> The AMA's about face on medical marijuana follows an announcement by
> the Obama Administration in October discouraging U.S. Attorneys from
> taking enforcement actions in medical marijuana states. In February
> 2008, a resolution was adopted by the American College of Physicians
> (ACP), the country's second largest physician group and the largest
> organization of doctors of internal medicine. The ACP resolution
> called for an "evidence-based review of marijuana's status as a
> Schedule I controlled substance to determine whether it should be
> reclassified to a different schedule. "The two largest physician
> groups in the U.S. have established medical marijuana as a health care
> issue that must be addressed,"
> said ASA
> Government Affairs Director Caren Woodson. "Both organizations have
> underscored the need for change by placing patients above politics."
>
> Though the CSAPH report has not been officially released to the
> public, AMA documentation indicates that it: "(1) provides a brief
> historical perspective on the use of cannabis as medicine; (2)
> examines the current federal and state-based legal envelope relevant
> to the medical use of cannabis;
> (3)
> provides a brief overview of our current understanding of the
> pharmacology and physiology of the endocannabinoid system; (4) reviews
> clinical trials on the relative safety and efficacy of smoked cannabis
> and botanical- based products; and (5) places this information in
> perspective with respect to the current drug regulatory framework."
>
> Further information:
> Executive Summary of AMA Report:
> http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/downloads/AMA_Report_Executive_Summa
> ry.pdf
> Recommendations of AMA Report:
> http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/downloads/AMA_Report_Recommendations
> .pdf American College of Physicians resolution:
> http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/where_we_stand/other_issues/medmarij
> uana.p
> df
>
> # # #
>
> With over 30,000 active members in more than 40 states, Americans for
> Safe Access (ASA) is the largest national member-based organization of
> patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens
> promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and
> research. ASA works to overcome political and legal barriers by
> creating policies that improve access to medical cannabis for patients
> and researchers through legislation, education, litigation, grassroots
> actions, advocacy and services for patients and the caregivers.
>
> --
> Kris Hermes
> Media Specialist
> Americans for Safe Access
> www.SafeAccessNow.org
> 1322 Webster Street, Suite 402
> Oakland, CA 94612
> Phone: 510-251-1856 x307
> Fax: 510-251-2036
> Email: kris@SafeAccessNow.org
>
> Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is the largest national member-based
> organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and
> concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for
> therapeutic use and research.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> Attachment: http://drugsense.org/temp/WnufXBStuokE.html
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
> asastaff@lists.safeaccessnow.org
> To be removed from the list, send any message to:
> asastaff-unsubscribe@lists.safeaccessnow.org
>
> For all list information and functions, including changing your
> subscription mode and options, visit the Web page:
> http://lists.safeaccessnow.org/lists/info/asastaff
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----

Fight heroin with heroin - study says

Monday, November 9, 2009 | | 0 comments

http://www.jointogether.org/news/research/summaries/2009/fight-heroin-with-heroin.html

Time to come clean - the economist

| | 0 comments

Time to come clean
The Economist
November 5, 2009

Are your drugs laws working? Ask a scientist

| | 0 comments



Are your drugs laws working? Ask a scientist
By Ben Goldacre
Guardian (UK)
November 7, 2009

in the news

Friday, November 6, 2009 | | 0 comments

 


Downtown Eastside addicts grow tired of fight for prescriptions
By Shadi Elien
Georgia Straight
November 5, 2009

Organization eyes second supervised injection site
Plans include crack inhalation room
By Mike Howell
Vancouver Courier
November 5, 2009 
 

 Amid Rising Violence, Mexicans Fight Back
Government Efforts to Control Drug Turf Wars Aren't Enough, Some Say; Mayor Promises to 'Clean Up' Organized Crime
By David Luhnow and Jose Cordoba
Wall Street Journal
November 6, 2009

Blinded by science

| | 0 comments

The Economist
Nov 5th 2009

Drugs policy

Blinded by science

An outspoken scientist is dumped, leaving the government in a mess

"THE Nutty Professor", as David Nutt is known in the Sun and other newspapers, has never been far from controversy. As chairman of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), Mr Nutt, who heads Bristol University's psychopharmacology unit, issued reports on narcotics and recommended where each should be placed on Britain's three-point scale of harmfulness. Such is the seething state of the drugs debate that more or less anything he said was guaranteed to enrage somebody.

Most recently he managed to upset Alan Johnson, the home secretary, who promptly sacked him on October 30th. His offence was to have repeated his view that cannabis and ecstasy are both less harmful than the government implies in its classification of them. Cannabis, currently class B, and ecstasy, class A, should both be demoted to class C, he said, adding for good measure that both were less harmful than alcohol and tobacco.

His comments about cannabis, which Mr Johnson described as part of a "campaign" against government policy, were made in a lecture at King's College London in July, which was published as a pamphlet last month. It followed an article in the racy Journal of Psychopharmacology in January, in which Mr Nutt upset ministers by comparing the risk of taking ecstasy with the risk of riding horses, a pursuit that claims a few deaths each year. Both lecture and article represented Mr Nutt's personal views and were clearly billed as such.

The government insists that the professor was sacked not for his scientific views but for overstepping the boundary between advising government and criticising it. But lecturing and publishing papers is hardly something that a full-time academic can give up when he takes on an (unpaid) advisory role. Anger has spread beyond the drugs world: Lord Drayson, the science minister, sent a private e-mail to Downing Street asking if the "big mistake" of Mr Nutt's dismissal could be reversed (it could not), and many of science's great and good have voiced their dismay.

Two more of the 31-member ACMD have since resigned in protest, and at least five others are said to be wavering. Mr Johnson is due to meet remaining members on November 10th to explain himself. Unless he manages to reassure them, other scientific jobs in government may prove harder to fill. By coincidence, the chief scientific adviser to the Home Office is to step down early next year. That job, like many across government, looks decidedly less appealing now.

In the meantime, who would want to take Mr Nutt's place? Even before the latest fiasco the job was wretched. The ACMD's recent reports on cannabis and ecstasy were dismissed by ministers before they were published. Following his article on ecstasy and riding, Mr Nutt was told by the home secretary of the day, Jacqui Smith, to apologise to the families of ecstasy victims for his "insensitivity". (He may have enjoyed her own comically insincere apology last month for over-claiming thousands of pounds in expenses. Ironically for someone who repeatedly turned a deaf ear to the ACMD, she said that she had only been following the recommendations of advisers.)

Unfortunately, the Conservatives are unlikely to handle things very differently if they win power next spring. David Cameron, who leads them, spoke out as a backbencher in favour of reclassifying ecstasy but has now clammed up. His party says only that Mr Nutt should have been sacked sooner. Amid the squabbling, important work is being neglected.

One of the ACMD members to resign was Les King, an expert on Spice, a "herbal high" which is not banned but many think should be. His departure means that work on it has stalled. Not for the first time in the war on drugs, public safety is taking a back seat.

* * *

Economist.com

Nov 5th 2009

Drugs policy

Time to come clean

Politicians need to tell the truth about drugs, not sack those who are brave enough to do so

IT WAS unwise of Richard Nixon to describe the worldwide prohibition of narcotics as a "war on drugs". But the ban, which marked a gloomy 40th anniversary this year, has been very much like a war in one sense: the first casualty has been the truth. The latest victim is David Nutt, an eminent psychopharmacologist who was sacked from his role as chair of Britain's drugs advisory panel on October 30th after a bust-up with the home secretary (see article). Professor Nutt was held to have overstepped the line between advising and interfering when he repeated his view that cannabis and ecstasy were less harmful than the government claims.

Quarrels between ministers and their scientific advisers are neither new nor unusual: Winston Churchill harrumphed that experts should be "on tap, not on top", and advisers on everything from energy to education are routinely favoured or frozen out according to the whims of ministers. But in drugs policy the relationship is badly on the rocks, thanks to the yawning gap that has emerged between the evidence that scientists provide and the policies that politicians are prepared to support in public. The guilty party is the politicians-and until they adopt a more realistic approach to drugs, they will struggle to find any serious experts with whom they can get along.

Policy-based evidence

Overruling expert advice is a minister's prerogative. But in drugs policy, advice has come to be disregarded altogether. Despite claiming to follow an evidence-based approach to policy-making, Britain's government has serially ignored research that fails to support its own position. When its drugs experts began a review of the harmfulness of cannabis in 2007 (the third such review in five years, the previous two having failed to come up with the right answer), Gordon Brown, the new prime minister, made it clear that he intended to upgrade the drug on Britain's three-point scale of harm even if the report recommended otherwise (which it duly did). The following year, as the expert panel began a review of ecstasy, the then home secretary ruled out downgrading the drug, whether or not the report found evidence that she should (again, it did).

These repeated run-ins with the facts were embarrassing enough, but the solution that the government has now found in sacking Professor Nutt is more shameful still. The professor's inconvenient remarks were not part of a "campaign" against the government's policies, as ministers have shrilly suggested: they were made in an article in a peer-reviewed pharmacological journal and in a lecture at King's College London. If unpaid academic advisers are sacked for publishing such research, there will soon not be many left.

The debate about drugs has become so divorced from reality that it is hard to imagine what sort of advice-and what exquisite tact-would be required to avoid inadvertently embarrassing politicians over their wilder pronouncements on the subject. Mr Brown, for instance, is on the record as saying that cannabis is "lethal". It is not, and there is no way around that.

Sadly, the evidence-free approach to dealing with drugs seems no less popular with Britain's Conservative opposition. Before he became their leader, David Cameron supported a parliamentary report calling for ecstasy to be downgraded and for the government to get the UN's Commission on Narcotic Drugs talking about different ways to tackle drugs, including legalising them. Now that he is within a whisker of power, his confidence has deserted him: he says that no drug should be downgraded, and his party's line on Professor Nutt's dismissal is that it should have happened sooner. Such contempt for the facts-and for the lives that an evidence-based approach to drugs could save-is deplorable.

FIRST Nov 23 forum: Sex Workers, Clients and the Law

Thursday, November 5, 2009 | | 0 comments

Press Advisory November 6, 2009

Sex Workers, Clients and the Law

You are cordially invited to a FIRST Public Forum,

November 23, 2009

VANCOUVER — Moderated by Madam Scarlett Lake, this public forum sponsored by FIRST will provide the public with an opportunity to learn about the men who buy sex, the experiences of sex workers with their clients, and why neither sex workers nor their clients should be criminalized.

Date: Monday, November 23, 2009


Time: Doors open: 6:30 p.m. Forum: 7 – 9 pm


Location: Vancouver Public Library, 350 W. Georgia, Alma Van Dusen & Peter Kay rooms

Admission by donation

Video (10 mins): 
"A Swedish sex worker on the criminalization of clients" (Pye Jacobssen)

Speakers:

§ Chris Atchison, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University. Topic: "John's Voice"

§ Trina Ricketts, BC Coalition of Experiential Communities; Naked Truth (nakedtruth.ca). Topic: "Trade Secrets" - Results of interviews with clients and sex workers

§ Jody Salerno, BC/Yukon Society of Transition Houses. Topic: "The clients who paid me"

§ Katrina Pacey, Pivot Legal Society. Topic: "Why Decriminalize Prostitution?"

Contact

Esther Shannon: 604.254.9963

Tamara O'Doherty: 778.772.2998

FIRST is a national coalition of feminists that advocates for the complete decriminalization of sex work, for both sex workers and clients.