Canadian Cannabis News – Page 2

26 May 2013

DECRIMINALIZE MORE THAN JUST POT, EXPERTS URGE

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The personal use of illegal drugs, including heroin and crack cocaine, should be decriminalized as part of a federal-provincial strategy to tackle drug abuse, a B.C.-based national coalition of drug policy experts argue.

In a report to be released Thursday, the coalition denounces the Harper government’s aggressive war on drugs, which puts the emphasis on law enforcement while steering money away from harm-reduction initiatives like Vancouver’s supervised injection site.

“While countries all around the world are adopting forward-thinking, evidence-based drug policies, Canada is taking a step backwards and strengthening punitive policies that have been proven to fail,” states a summary of the 112-page report from the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, which is based at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction.

The “stunning display of unimaginative thinking” has failed to decrease the flow of drugs into Canada while hampering efforts to deal with drug-related health problems.

“Despite Canada’s significant investment in drug control efforts, drugs are cheaper and more available than ever,” the report notes.

Among the recommendations is a call to legalize, regulate and tax the sale of marijuana to adults, taking advantage of an underground business that generates an estimated $357 million in annual sales in B.C. alone, according to the authors.

By far the most controversial recommendation calls for the end to prohibition of not only “soft” drugs like marijuana, but products like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines.

The report notes that at least 25 jurisdictions in the world have moved to decriminalize at least some drugs, with Portugal (in 2001) and the Czech Republic (in 2010) ending criminal bans for all drugs.

“After decriminalization and similar to Portugal, drug use (among Czechs) has not increased significantly but the social harms of drug use have declined,” the report stated.

“In Portugal, decriminalization has had the effect of decreasing the numbers of people injecting drugs, decreasing the number of people using drugs problematically, and decreasing trends of drug use among 15 to 24 year olds.”

The coalition lists as its “partners” more than 70 organizations, including the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the Central Alberta AIDS Network Society, the Canadian Cancer Survivor Network, and the Canadian Association of Nurses in AIDS Care.

Its report is harshly critical of the federal government’s anti-drug and tough-on-crime policies introduced since Stephen Harper became prime minister in 2006, including minimum mandatory sentences for certain drug offences.

Among the targets is the five-year National Anti-Drug Strategy, which was renewed for another five years in 2012 at a cost of $528 million. The program devotes most of its money (roughly 70 per cent) to law enforcement, according to the report.

It also goes after the Canadian Forces’ substantial investment in counter-narcotics missions in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific, involving warships and aircraft operating with U.S. forces.

It complains about the lack of support of, and in the case of the Vancouver supervised injection site aggressive opposition to, “harm-reduction” programs like needle exchanges that “save lives and protect everyone’s health,” according to the Newfoundland AIDS Committee.

The Harper government has never flinched from its strong support for get-tough measures against drug offences, often sneering at academic studies suggesting that its measures, while popular among many Conservative party supporters, had debatable or even counterproductive results.

In 2007, for instance, then-health minister Tony Clement declared that the “party’s over” while speaking of his party’s contempt for the former Liberal government’s approach to illicit drug use.

The coalition report cites 2011 Health Canada statistics indicating that B.C. has the highest percentage of people who have used marijuana at least once in their lives, with the B.C. rate of 44.3 per cent well above the national average of 39.4 per cent.

Health Canada said 12.1 per cent of British Columbians said they smoked pot over the past year, second to Nova Scotia’s 12.4 per cent and well above the national average of 9.1 per cent.

Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Peter O’Neil

30 Apr 2013

Make Money With Pot, Not War

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Are we about to see the end of the war on drugs?

Following ballot measures last November, producing and selling marijuana are now legal in both Colorado and Washington state. Several other U.S. states have decriminalized simple possession of marijuana, or allowed its medical usage. The latter is also the case in Canada.

The financial consequences of a complete and general legalization across the continent would certainly be huge.

Over the past couple of decades, billions of dollars have been spent fighting this unwinnable war, which has fuelled corruption, organized crime, and violence. Thousands of people are killed in drug fights every year in Mexico. In Canada and the U.S., it has justified growing government intrusion in commercial and private life, from the money-laundering bureaucracies to civil forfeiture laws.

Despite this, recreational use of drugs is as popular as ever.

The simple economic fact is that when there is a demand, a supply will be forthcoming — legally or illegally. We should therefore reconcile ourselves with what economists call “consumer sovereignty,” that is, let people consume what they want, and let’s prosecute only real crimes.

From an economic perspective, it would be a lot more profitable for everyone if we stopped wasting resources trying to suppress this trade, and instead let it develop legitimately and have governments regulate and tax it. I don’t like taxes, but in that case, that would mean a huge improvement in terms of economic efficiency.

In British Columbia only, where a lot of marijuana is illicitly being grown, legalization could generate $2.5 billion in government tax and licensing revenues over five years, according to a recent research paper from Simon Fraser University.

Both the Wall Street Journal and The Economist have been convincingly arguing for many years against the war on drugs. And for the first time in more than four decades of polling on the issue, a majority of Americans now favour legalizing the use of marijuana. In Canada, public support has also been high for several years.

My point is not that drug consumption is a good thing or that I encourage it, but merely that any rational person can see that the current policy has not been a success despite all the money spent and all the people jailed. It is high time we rethink our strategy in this regard. Let’s end the war on pot and make money with it instead.

Source: Kingston Whig-Standard (CN ON)
Copyright: 2013 Sun Media
Contact: http://www.thewhig.com/letters
Website: http://www.thewhig.com/
Author: Michel Kelly-Gagnon

28 Apr 2013

Pot Activist Sees ‘Beginning Of The End’ For Prohibition

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4/20. New numbers released ahead of yearly smoke-out in city show majority warming to marijuana legalization in B.C.

There will be more than just a pungent aroma wafting over the Vancouver Art Gallery at Saturday’s annual 4/20 protest.

Activists say a new wave of optimism has been lit under them by more polls showing overwhelming public support for marijuana legalization in B.C.

“I feel like we’re at the beginning of the end of cannabis prohibition now,” said longtime pot campaigner Dana Larsen, referring to the November referendums in Washington and Colorado that saw adult recreational use legalized.

“I’ve been involved in this for 20 years and people have often said, ‘Oh, it’s just around the corner, they’re going to legalize it any day now.’ And I’ve always thought, ‘No, it’s going to be within my lifetime if I’m lucky,’ but … I feel like there’s a pathway now to decriminalization for us in the province that didn’t exist before.”

Larsen will be on the main stage at Saturday’s annual smoke-out, encouraging 15,000 to 20,000 giggling, redeyed revellers to get involved in his Sensible BC campaign, which aims to spur a provincial referendum in September 2014.

An Angus Reid poll released Thursday found 73 per cent of British Columbians support a proposed research trial to evaluate whether the taxation and strict regulation of adult marijuana use could reduce profits to organized crime and better prevent youth access.

Another poll released this week, commissioned by Sensible BC, shows more than 70 per cent support for decriminalizing possession and urging the federal government to give B.C. the right to legalize the drug.

Larsen says he has more than 1,000 volunteers, 20,000 people pre-registered to sign his referendum petition this fall, and robocalls scheduled to go out to every land-line number in the province starting this week, offering the option to pre-register for the petition.

Source: Metro (Vancouver, CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 Metro Canada
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.metronews.ca/vancouver
Author: Kate Webb

23 Apr 2013

The Conservative Pro-Pot Argument

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If you want smaller government and you want the government out of people’s private lives, you need to support the legalization of marijuana. It’s the logically consistent viewpoint for a conservative.

I write this in the leadup to the annual 4/20 marijuana marches where otherwise law-abiding citizens who consume, grow or trade the substance will take to the streets nationwide to show their love of pot.

It’s absurd that we have laws making it mandatory to toss someone in jail for six months if they have six plants or more. And that’s one of the lighter sentences.

Let’s look at some of the data from QMI columnist Thane Burnett’s multi-part feature on pot last December. The piece was inspired by Washington State and Colorado voting in support of legalization.

In an Angus Reid poll done at the time, 57% of Canadians supported legalization. Only 39% opposed it.

According to Health Canada, more than 40% of Canadians have used cannabis. In a poll on the Sun websites – though not scientific, certainly informative – 81% of readers voted for legalization.

Criminal

My view is the law criminalizes commerce. It criminalizes gardening. And it criminalizes your right to do what you want with your body so long as you’re not violating anyone else’s liberties.

All the arguments in favour of the status quo – or tighter laws – can be knocked aside with one hand tied behind your back.

They’re mostly about how pot can ruin a person, their family or their wallet. Or they’re arguments about organized crime.

The first puts pot on par with booze, gambling, or any other supposed vice people can be obsessed with. Should we make all those illegal? There are many things which, done to excess, can harm a person and their family. But it’s up to individuals to moderate themselves, not the state. I believe in personal responsibility, do you?

Now, organized crime arguments are all tertiary. They’re all, “But if we legalize pot then this other bad thing might happen…” Well guess what? After pot is legalized, drug-related gang fights in the streets will still be illegal. All the spinoff crimes that the underground drug trade produces will still be illegal. In fact, they’ll likely decrease.

Many people who smoke, grow and sell marijuana do so in a completely peaceable way. It’s wrong to make them criminals.

You can come up with all the technical arguments in the world to support the status quo. But ultimately all you’re saying is you want to infringe on people’s liberties because you don’t like what’s in their garden or pocket, or because they like a joint after a hard day at work instead of a beer.

Don’t forget, billions of tax dollars have been wasted on big government pot intrusion. It’s time to go from losing billions on pot to gaining billions via consumption taxes.

Some try to argue most drug laws aren’t even enforced anyway so who cares? Two problems with that.

The first is it’s incorrect. According to Statistics Canada, of the more than 113,000 drug crimes across the country in 2011, 54% were for cannabis possession. The second problem is we should always be striving to get bad laws off the books.

The NDP and Liberals want to decriminalize, if not outright legalize, the substance. But they’re not in power. It’s time for small government proponents to do the same. Calling all conservatives: Puff, puff, pass the legislation!

Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2013 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.ottawasun.com/
Author: Anthony Furey, QMI Agency

20 Apr 2013

Marijuana reform high on electorate’s list

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Here’s something you won’t see happen on Saturday: Christy Clark or Adrian Dix’s campaign buses rolling up to the north lawn of the Vancouver Art Gallery to the cheers of thousands of marijuana activists. Neither Mr. Dix nor Ms. Clark will push their way through the happy crowds and skunk-scented smoke, glad-handing potential voters. It is even less likely that either will make their way to the stage brandishing a freshly rolled spliff, spark it up and declare 4/20 officially “on.”

Neither will inhale deeply, nor extol the virtues of weed, nor pass the dutchie to the left-hand side. And you certainly won’t hear them making speeches calling for the decriminalization, legalization, or the regulation and taxation of pot.

A pair of polls released this week suggests that the party leaders are lagging behind their constituents when it comes to attitudes about the decriminalization and eventual legalization of marijuana in B.C.

In fact, if the poll numbers are right, not driving the campaign buses on to the art gallery lawn with Bob Marley blaring from the speakers and waving marijuana-leaf flags out the windows might be something of a missed opportunity.

The first poll comes from the Sensible Change Society of B.C., a group headed by one-time federal NDP candidate Dana Larsen, who withdrew from the 2008 race after a video showing him with a mouthful of joints surfaced on the Web. Three years later, Mr. Larsen ran for the leadership of the BC NDP and won just 2.7 per cent of the vote.

Mr. Larsen has proposed what he calls “The Sensible Policing Act,” which would, first, direct police to ignore minor marijuana offences, and second, call on the federal government to repeal the prohibition on marijuana so the province could legally regulate pot the same way it regulates alcohol and tobacco.

The poll shows that roughly 70 per cent of respondents support both parts of the plan. It also shows that just under half of those surveyed say they would be more likely to support a political leader who called for marijuana reform.

A second poll, also timed to coincide with the annual 4/20 “cannabis celebration,” shows that nearly three-quarters of British Columbians would support further research into the regulation and taxation of marijuana. The Ipsos Reid poll shows significant support for leaders who would endorse such research.

In both polls, support for marijuana reform crosses all political stripes, geographic boundaries, age groups and levels of education.

This is, of course, not a new issue in our province. Stop the Violence B.C., a coalition of law enforcement, health and academic experts which commissioned the Ipsos Reid poll, has been arguing for marijuana reform since the coalition was founded in 2011.

Along with many others, Stop the Violence contends that regulating and taxing marijuana production and distribution would take the profits out of the hands of criminal gangs, and result in not only safer streets but also in a potential tax windfall for the province.

But so far, even with numbers that show support for reform, even with the arguments that regulation would curb violence and contribute significantly to provincial coffers, both Christy Clark and Adrian Dix have ducked the issue. When questioned, both have repeatedly pointed to the fact that drug enforcement is a federal responsibility.

Dana Larsen notes that neither leader has had trouble commenting on other issues that are regulated by the federal government.

“We take action and talk about federal issues all the time, whether it’s the Coast Guard station being closed or pipelines, or the long-gun registry back in 2003, so there’s really no reason the province can’t take action on this issue as well,” Mr. Larsen said in an interview.

Indeed, “Pressing for new Coast Guard resources to be placed in Vancouver” even appears in the Liberal Party’s platform.

As for the NDP, Mr. Larsen suspects that while the party may be sympathetic, it would be folly to tackle an issue as controversial as marijuana legalization during an election campaign.

Professor Neil Boyd, who teaches criminology at Simon Fraser University, agrees that making marijuana reform an issue during a provincial election campaign is difficult.

But like Mr. Larsen, Prof. Boyd says the province can play a part. “The province does have power over the administration of justice and could certainly decide not to spend, for example, the $10-million a year it currently spends enforcing marijuana possession laws,” he said.

Given that it happens to fall on Saturday, and in the middle of an election campaign, organizers of this year’s 4/20 rally estimate it will be the biggest gathering of its kind Vancouver has ever seen.

But it may have little impact once the smoke clears.

Source: Globe and Mail

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/marijuana-reform-high-on-electorates-list/article11436140/

Author: STEPHEN QUINN

19 Apr 2013

Lottery Winner to Pledge $1,000,000 to Legalize Cannabis

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On Saturday April 20^th, activists and cannabis enthusiasts will gather in cities across Canada, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax and Yellowknife. It is hoped the events will be a watershed moment for cannabis law reform as Canadians seek to follow their American counterparts and end the social injustice of cannabis prohibition.

This year, the annual nationwide 420 celebrations are entirely sponsored by lottery winner Bob Erb.

When Bob Erb started buying lottery tickets in the early 1970s, ending the war against cannabis may have seemed more likely than hitting the jackpot.

On November 2, 2012, four decades of playing the lottery paid off: Bob Erb won a $25,000,000 jackpot. Two days later, Canadian laws regarding cannabis changed too as mandatory minimum sentencing for cannabis offences came into effect.

To some, winning the lottery would mean retiring from a life-long career of cannabis activism. But to a man who describes the criminalization of cannabis as the “biggest social injustice” of his lifetime, the money meant a chance to do more.

Bob Erb has championed social justice issues, including cannabis law reform, for decades. He has seen firsthand the harm and waste caused by cannabis prohibition, and has set about making change. Particularly, he has tried to create change from within: in 2001 he ran as a Marijuana Party candidate in the BC provincial election and the following year he ran for mayor. Both times his message was clear: its time for a change on cannabis.

Looking to the future, Bob has pledged one million dollars to fund national campaigns to end the criminal prohibition of cannabis and enact positive regulations regarding use, production and consumer safety. His goal is to see a pro-reform party elected in the next Canadian federal election.

So far, Bob Erb’s contributions to the cannabis reform movement can be felt nationwide. In February he had a conference in his hometown of Terrace, BC. The conference brought together activists and policy experts from across Canada to discuss strategy for the future.

As a result of the conference, Bob committed one million dollars to legalize cannabis in Canada and pledged support to various reform organizations including Sensible BC, the NORML Women’s Alliance of Canada, NORML Canada, Stop the Violence BC and the 420 rallies.

This Saturday, tens of thousands of Canadians will gather from coast to coast advocating cannabis law reform. Hopefully, individuals will feel part of something bigger than themselves or the local rally they attended.

Bob Erb’s generosity has jump-started a national campaign to elect a new government ready to undertake modern approach to cannabis regulation. Advocates are confident cannabis law reform will be an issue in the next federal election. This year’s 420 rallies will be a call to voters and the beginning of a movement in the name of Bob Erb.

Link: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/lottery-winner-to-pledge-1000000-to-legalize-cannabis-1780452.htm

16 Apr 2013

Teen marijuana use Common because of Canadian Drug Policy

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The high rate of marijuana use among Canada’s youth is a by-product of strict drug control, pot activist and BC Green Party candidate Jodie Emery said.

Canada has the highest rate of cannabis use among young people in developed countries, according to a recent report by UNICEF. In Canada, 28 per cent of kids aged 11, 13 and 15 reported having used cannabis in the last 12 months. The data comes from a 2009-2010 World Health Organization (WHO) survey of 29 developed countries.

Canada also had the highest rates of youth marijuana use in a similar WHO survey conducted eight years prior, but the rate has gone down from 40 per cent to 28 per cent. While the situation may have improved, young people continue to use cannabis at a very high rate, despite laws against it.

In the Netherlands, a country known for its relaxed drug policy, only 17 per cent of youth said they used cannabis. Emery said that this actually makes sense.

“In countries with more liberal drug laws, the use of marijuana and other drugs is lower,” she said, a view that corresponds to the report’s findings.

Emery argued that the legalization and regulation of drugs help control the substance and keep it out of the hands of young people. When drugs are illegal, they’re controlled by criminal organizations, and gangs “give it to anyone who wants it,” she said. Further, these gangs make money off of prohibited drugs, so Emery asserts that politicians who support prohibition are in fact supporting gangs.

The health impacts of marijuana use are limited, and Emery says it’s no worse than alcohol, but a criminal record due to drug possession can have a life-long impact.

“The law causes more harm to young people than does the substance itself, Emery stated. “That needs to change.”

Emery makes it clear that she doesn’t condone marijuana use among children, and cited a report that suggested 16 could be an appropriate minimum age for marijuana use. The 2002 report, from a special committee to the Canadian Senate, recommended the legalization and regulation of marijuana. It said cannabis laws should only prohibit what causes demonstrable harm to others: illegal trafficking, impaired driving, and selling it to people under the age of sixteen.

Last November, a poll by Forum Research found that 65 per cent of Canadians support the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana. And yet, marijuana remains banned, with an exception for medical use.

Emery and many other proponents of legalization suggest that Canada follow the example of Washington state, which voted in November to legalize marijuana. The state will be regulating the sale of marijuana, while banning sales to young people, in the same way that alcohol is regulated.

Source: http://www.vancouverobserver.com/life/health/teen-marijuana-use-common-because-canadian-drug-policy-says-pot-activist

Author: Chris Lane

16 Apr 2013

Marijuana studies under Trudeau shelved before results Analyzed

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Ralph Miller was barely 30 years when he was hand-picked to lead a Canadian commission on whether marijuana should be legalized.

As research director, it was his job to guide a small army of scientists to investigate the nonmedicinal impact of a much-demonized drug during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

On May 29, 1969, then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau appointed Gerald Le Dain, a former dean of Osgoode Hall Law School and a future Supreme Court justice, to lead the inquiry. Le Dain hired the Miller — one of the few scientists who had a foot in both academia and the alternative culture. He was working at McMaster University at the time and had come to Canada a few years earlier from his native Detroit.

It has been described as one of the most comprehensive royal commissions ever conducted. The inquiry lasted almost four years. Nearly 30 public hearings took place across the country. Miller’s group oversaw 120 projects examining the physiological, psychological and behavioural effects of marijuana and other illegal drugs. They looked at extent and patterns of use, the social context of these drugs, how they played in mass media, legal and illegal sources of distribution, their role in law enforcement and the correctional system, among other things.

Around the same time, research funded by Ontario’s Conservative government was underway in Toronto to study the long-term effects of marijuana smoking in male and female volunteers. Dr. C.G. (Bill) Miles’ series of studies for the Addiction Research Foundation fed into the commission’s work though only portions of the results from the male studies were ever published.

By the time the commission issued its last of four reports in 1973, the perceived “drug crisis” in Canada was already waning. The commissioners were divided on whether pot should be legalized or decriminalized and much of the innovative research was left unanalyzed, according to Miller. The material was packed into boxes bound for the national archives. Miller says he would be willing to advise keen graduate students on how to start unpacking some of that rich data.

the Toronto Star spoke with Miller by email at an ashram in Rishikesh, India, and later by phone in West Vancouver, B.C., where he still consults on the impact of marijuana as well and holistic psychology.

“I have gotten a lot of mileage (kilometerage?) out of my Le Dain cannabis research,” he quipped by email.

Here is an edited transcript of his remarks on the collision of marijuana, science and politics from that time.

What prompted the commission?

“There was a lot of talk that drugs were destroying our youth, that hospitals were full of young people gone crazy on the use of drugs and that crime had gone up from drugs.

That was the crisis that caused Trudeau to say what is going on here.

All it was originally going to be was a departmental inquiry about marijuana issues. And then of course concern about LSD, psychedelics and so on.

At that point, coke hadn’t really reared its head in Canada much and heroin was entirely restricted to the West Coast.

Their great mistake, the Cabinet’s, is that they didn’t specifically exclude anything. They didn’t consider alcohol and tobacco to be drugs because in the general population it isn’t.

I made a point on logical grounds and in terms of physiological and socioeconomic effects, we had to include alcohol.

So the interim report did include alcohol, but not tobacco.

But I wrote all the tobacco stuff and stuffed it in the final report with only general approval at the end because they didn’t want to tackle that as well.

But when you look at the alcohol and drug research, it makes everything else a bad joke.

That’s why I quit working in the area.

They weren’t interested in the problem, in terms of the socio-economic impact of drugs, which means alcohol and tobacco. Added up, everything else is nothing compared to alcohol and tobacco problems.”

How did you land the job?

“They couldn’t find anyone in Canada qualified who also had a foot in the alternative culture.

I had given a talk on the non-medical use of drugs as part of a university conference. Le Dain heard about that and called me personally at McMaster to meet with him.

At that time, I had a giant Afro (dark brown, black) and had recently escaped from the U.S. to McMaster.

I purposely didn’t spiff myself up.

Le Dain himself was a conservative man, but brilliant, funny and intellectually honest.

I thought this was going to be just another government blah, blah, blah and I wasn’t really interested.

In my interview he never mentioned my hair.

Now my hair is trimmed up. I have my vice-president Biden hairdo on now.

No one else had ever been paid to work full time in these areas. Not only doing the original research, but surveying anyone who had ever done any LSD or any cannabis research. No one else had ever been in a position to do this before.

I was easily the world expert in cannabis.

What were some of the highlights of your research?

There were some amazing and funny things.

We got permission to use the RCMP airport at Rockcliffe. We wanted to see how fast stoners could drive around, what they would run over, if they could park.

That’s where the first driving studies were done.

We tested marijuana and alcohol on runways they weren’t using at the time.

We had regular stoners rating as high as they ever got and still driving around in the RCMP airport.

We did the first and only survey of every RCMP officer, went through all of their chemical analysis records in detail. And three months later, we had the meeting with the RCMP officers.

They were very embarrassed because they were expected to have all this data on marijuana and crime.

Other than busting people for simple possession and small dealers, they had nothing, except some guys who got busted for marijuana and were already under suspicion for gang rape a few weeks earlier. There was one case of a young man who turned out to be schizophrenic. He had taken hash and assaulted his parents. But it wasn’t clear it was even in the same month.

They said they were sure the world literature would support them, which it didn’t.

So that blew away the marijuana-causing-crime issue.

The LSD crimes were a young man naked worshipping the golden boy statue in front of the capitol building in Manitoba; some guys naked running through Stanley Park; and three people caught inappropriately dressed worshipping the trees in the park.

One of the crimes was he pulled into a gas station while high on LSD and tried to get them to service six imaginary automobiles. How’s that for heavy crime?

The worst one of all? A woman was caught attempting to fornicate with a peanut-vending machine.

The RCMP officers writing this down must have had a hoot but the head commissioners didn’t think this was funny at all. They were highly embarrassed.

We surveyed every psychiatric hospital and every hospital and major clinic with a psychiatric ward or outpatient clinic.

Physicians were seeing these kids coming in seeming schizy and that they were smoking dope and assumed that the families will want to blame something outside. Because it’s either the parenting or the outside. Because genetics is very hidden and not clearly known at that time.

In Ottawa, study, No difference between number of schizophrenics to be expected (1-3 per cent of population in age groups) and number being reported as being caused by marijuana/LSD. Which means marijuana or LSD was not likely causing anything but was maybe concomitant in increasing the symptoms.

The psych hospitals were full of people with alcohol problems. Again, alcohol wiped everything else off the map.

Was the drug crisis exaggerated?

“A general but not well-defined fear fed into “drug crisis.”

Many believed marijuana was a gateway drug. But in those days, few people smoked marijuana who didn’t start with tobacco.

I just gave a talk on that in India.”

Where did the pot for your research come from?

“A field run by the U.S. government in Kentucky. They collected seeds from around the world and were growing them in different conditions there.

Kentucky pot was a dark, rich green.”

What happened?

“We ran out of money and all of the studies we did — the pharmacology studies — were left only in the not-finished, final statistical analysis.

They didn’t come up with the money for a follow-up until all of my staff members had jobs elsewhere.

That was in 1973/74.

All of our core research, even the data, is in the national archives. Most is still in microfiche. And most of it hasn’t been published other than in the reports. Except the stuff that we involved outside people who had their own research grants from universities in California and around Ontario that published on their own.

But I couldn’t do it free.

I had my two kids. No access to staff or computers.

I was living in a wonderful commune in Stanley Park, Vancouver. I worked at a rehab program.

When the commission was over, Trudeau put the word out to the prosecutors and the whole judicial system and police to not waste time on simple possession.

Trudeau couldn’t do much with it. There wasn’t the political will around the country. They were still very conservative about it.

And here we are, a half-century later just about, and now the issue is coming around again. It’s about time.

I’ve been disappointed that no one seems to be tracking down any of us about the political, socio-economic issues.

Even young Trudeau himself seems to be dealing with these issues and doesn’t mention his dad’s commission at all.

He’s fishing around for answers and his dad’s commission did the work. And people don’t even seem to recognize it.”

What was your final conclusion?

“The big plague of stoners bringing Canada to its knees is a farce.”

Source: Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd.
Link: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/04/08/governments_research_on_marijuanas_effects_done_long_ago.html
Author:Diana Zlomislic

15 Apr 2013

Weird 1972 Experiment In Marijuana Use

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In the winter of 1972, 20 young women took part in one of the weirdest scientific experiments in this country’s history.

For 98 days in a downtown Toronto hospital, their brains, hearts, kidneys, livers, blood and urine were rigorously tested and analyzed. A team of nurses kept round-the-clock records of their behaviour, logged at half-hour intervals.

Just how was marijuana affecting the 10 who had to smoke it every day?

Forty-one years later, these women are still wondering what exactly happened to them during their three-month stretch as human guinea pigs.

Doreen Brown, who now lives in Cambridge, is one of the women who took part in the study while in her 20s. She turns 63 this month.

In the late 1960s, Brown moved to downtown Toronto to live on her own after her mother died. She was 17.

“I was full of grief, a brick wall,” says Brown. “I did things I knew weren’t good for me.”

Acid, mescaline, marijuana.

Though high or tired, she never missed a shift as a department store secretary.

But by the time she was 21, the lifestyle was wearing on her. When a co-worker told her a group of scientists was looking for female volunteers to participate in a marijuana study for money, she saw an escape.

“It was a very split-second decision,” Brown says. “I didn’t like what I was doing. I wanted a change and thought, ‘Why not?’ ”

The research was part of a million-dollar program, the last in a series of provincially funded experiments designed to answer one of the country’s most pressing questions, raised when then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau entertained the idea of legalizing marijuana.

The study was lead by C.G. ( Bill ) Miles, a British psychologist working in Toronto.

In 1971, the Addiction Research Foundation opened a research and treatment hospital where Miles’ marijuana study, Project E206, would be held.

He assembled a team that included two behavioural psychologists, one doctor, a psychiatrist, a social worker and a full-shift complement of registered nurses and attendants.

The hospital welcomed the 20 women to the ward with a formal dinner on Jan. 31, 1972.

Brown, then 21, scanned the long table. None of the women, aged 18 to 35, looked familiar, though some seemed to know each other.

The ward was clean and modern, with blue carpet underfoot and the smell of fresh paint in the air.

It seemed an ideal place for a personal reinvention.

“I was hoping that maybe in there I would solve some of my issues – to be more open, happier,” Brown says. “I was definitely a lost soul at that point. Directionless. I needed help but I didn’t know where to go to get it.”

The women were quickly split into two groups in two different areas of the hospital. Half of them – the experimental group – were required to smoke increasingly potent doses of marijuana twice a night, while the other half – the control group – did not. Both sides could buy as many relatively mild joints as they wanted for 50 cents apiece at a store that also sold alcohol, junk food, toiletries, cigarettes and magazines.

And then they got to work.

A key element of the study was its microeconomy. The women were required to cover the cost of their existence, except for their bed and water, for 98 days. Whatever money they earned and did not spend on food, clothing or entertainment, they could keep. A $250 bonus awaited those who stuck with the experiment until the end. Those who quit early would lose the extra payout and up to 75 per cent of their savings.

They made their living on a primitive-looking wooden device, a Guatemalan backstrap loom, on which they wove colourful, fuzzy, woollen belts with knotted tassels. For every belt that passed inspection – it had to contain at least two colours and measure 132 centimetres in length – the women received $2.50.

After a few days of practice, the task got easier.

One participant bought chalk from the ward store to draw murals on the lounge walls. Another, a professional bartender, mixed drinks. Women in both groups were known to walk around naked. Living on locked, separate wards didn’t stop women from the two groups from communicating with each other or people in surrounding office buildings – like the men who were being held in the forensic psychiatry unit at the Clarke Institute, which was next door. The women wrote friendly, short messages on large placards and flashed their signs through the large windows that faced the street and an interior courtyard.

The carefree vibe didn’t last long.

The joints became so potent that some sought a doctor’s note to get out of their nightly obligations, saying they felt too sick to smoke.

“We were asking them to take it away,” Brown says. “They knew we wanted it taken away; there was no doubt. I felt comatose. I couldn’t do anything.

“It became torture,” Brown says.

In the last week, the women who were left on the mandatory smoking unit refused to continue.

On May 8, 1972, the women left the centre.

Brown expected relief, some sense of freedom, but she felt paranoid instead.

“It was very scary,” she says. “I thought, ‘Where am I going to go? What am I going to do?’ I was afraid to get on the subway.

“I was hoping that being in there for those 98 days might give me some perspective. But if anything, for me, it magnified my problems.”

She spent a few years in therapy and went to the University of Toronto to study political science and history.

In her late 30s, she got pregnant and moved to Cambridge to raise her son. She still works full-time at a local hearing clinic. She has a granddaughter.

She still wonders what became of the results of the experiment.

Brown says she made several inquiries during the ’80s and ’90s. She would have been more aggressive but feared she might lose her job at the time if word got out that she had taken part in a marijuana experiment.

She’s less concerned now.

“I want to know, I want to know,” she says. “The dosages. What they found psychologically, physically. I feel ripped off, taken advantage of. It’s just like it didn’t happen. I feel like, yeah, you gave three months of your life for what?

“Were the results that horrible that they didn’t give them to us? You wonder. I think they might have supported legalizing marijuana. That’s why they didn’t come out. I don’t know. It leaves you with a lot of questions.”

Miles died in 2009 at the age of 74, but there are still some people who can help fill in the blanks of the women-and-marijuana study.

Janet McDougall was one of the junior researchers on the project.

She recalls the group disbanding suddenly and being left virtually alone with a few binders and reels of brown data tape. On Miles’ instructions, she sent portions of it to economists at Texas A&M University.

Among them was John Kagel, now a professor of applied microeconomics at Ohio State University. “Our analysis showed these people were perfectly rational, worked their butts off. There was a beautiful, inadvertent event where they went on strike because they were making them smoke too much marijuana and it was interfering with their earnings, which appeared to be a primary motivation for some of them going into the thing.”

Research today indicates that while frequent cannabis smoking may well have harmful effects – including dependence and susceptibility to lung infections – motivation is not a problem.

Junior researcher McDougall does not know where the rest of the research data is today.

Dr. Harold Kalant, the renowned former director of biological and behavioural research at the Addiction Research Foundation who, at 90, still works for its successor, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, knew in general terms what Miles was doing and what he found.

Did politics get in the way of Miles disseminating the data into a final report?

“My guess is that it probably wasn’t yielding anything that was going to have a direct influence on policy,” says Kalant.

For all the questions it raised, the study did answer at least one question convincingly, according to Ohio State’s Kagel.

“In terms of the central issue, if you legalize marijuana, were you going to get a bunch of stoned people just hanging out smoking dope all the time and not doing any work? This is fairly convincing evidence that wasn’t going to happen.”

Source: Record, The (Kitchener, CN ON)
Copyright: 2013 Metroland Media Group Ltd.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://news.therecord.com/
Author: Diana Zlomislic

30 Mar 2013

Pot Views Changing

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

For political science pundits, it’s a new high. The latest public survey shows more than two in every five Lethbridge-area people agree with recreational use of marijuana. And even more – close to 79 per cent – say it should be readily available as a medical treatment.

The growing support for decriminalizing the use of marijuana, from 42 per cent of local residents who responded, is reported by the Citizen Society Research Lab at Lethbridge College. Approval was even higher ( 42.7 per cent ) in Coaldale, also included in the college’s twice-yearly public opinion surveys.

Nearly 45 per cent of Albertans responding to the college’s province-wide poll last fall were also in favour – and the strongest support, 48.2 per cent, came from across southern Alberta.

“It’s the ( baby ) boomers and the parents of kids who might get ‘busted’ with a small amount of pot,” says Faron Ellis, political scientist at Lethbridge College.

They’re hoping to see Canadian law changed, as voters were in Colorado and Washington state. Realistically, Albertans know the Stephen Harper government stands opposed.

But it’s the provincial government that appoints the judges, he adds, and they’re not harsh with first-time offenders.

The new telephone survey – taken Feb. 9 and 10, with 835 randomly selected adults in Lethbridge and Coaldale – showed Wildrose party supporters more likely ( more than 39 per cent ) than Conservatives ( 33.6 ) to support decriminalization. New Democrats were most strongly supportive at 65.5 per cent.

Wildrose partisans were also more permissive than Tories on other issues, Ellis found. Citizens who said they vote Wildrose also voiced stronger support for medical use of marijuana, for doctor-assisted suicide and for a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

They’re reflecting a libertarian view that’s also surfaced among Harper’s MPs, he points out.

“They’re saying we should have less government interference in our economic lives, but also in our personal lives.”

Ellis says approval for the prescribed use of marijuana to counteract pain and other medical symptoms has been strong, ever since the college began its twice-a-year opinion surveys. It’s remained in the 70-80 per cent range over the last decade, peaking at 80.1 per cent in 2012.

Support continues to grow on another issue, a woman’s right to choose. Despite in-your-face campaigns by some religious groups, Ellis reports pro-choice responses have passed 80 per cent for the first time.

“It appears their behaviour has failed to stop the trend to more and more support” for choice, he says.

Perhaps surprisingly, the latest poll found 87.4 per cent of Lethbridge and Coaldale residents who attend church as least “several times a year” support women’s choice.

That figure grows to 94 per cent of those who said they attend “seldom or never,” a group that includes about 52 per cent of all residents polled.

A bare majority of those who claimed to attend at least twice a month were also in favour, reflecting differences between the city’s religious liberals and conservatives.

Ellis says the survey also found most southern Albertans agree on a once-contentious topic. Same-sex marriage is supported by more than 83.8 per cent of those who attend church occasionally as well as 85.2 per cent who said “seldom or never.”

Among those who say they attend very regularly ( about 30 per cent of the population ) there’s close to 40 per cent support.

When the question was asked 10 years ago – before all provinces had made the change – Ellis says about one-third of Lethbridge people polled were in favour of lesbian or gay couples marrying. But now, for the first time, that popular support has passed 70 per cent.

“Southern Albertans have accepted that as a just and legitimate aspect of Canadian society,” he says.

Public support for a still-controversial issue, doctor-assisted death, has also grown. Nearly 75 per cent of those responding to this month’s survey voiced their approval, compared with 66.4 per cent a year ago and 61.9 per cent in 2011. More than 82 per cent of those who sometimes attend church were in favour, vs. about 44 per cent who attend frequently.

In contrast, Ellis says, more than 60 per cent of those who attend frequently were in favour of the death penalty for first-degree murder – – nearly as high as the 66.6 per cent who don’t attend.

Church attendance isn’t an absolute predictor of southern Albertans’ attitudes, Ellis admits. On some issues, he says, it depends on whether people lean more heavily on Old Testament vengeance or New Testament forgiveness.

The Lethbridge College survey, conducted by supervised college students and distance education students of Athabasca University, polled citizens whose phone numbers were selected at random. Its margin of error is stated as 3.4 percentage points, plus or minus, 19 times out of 20.

Source: Lethbridge Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2013 The Lethbridge Herald
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.lethbridgeherald.com/
Author: Dave Mabell

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