Friday, March 27, 2009

London, Ontario Courth House Photowalk









Thursday, March 26, 2009

Bill C-15 could fill prisons

Bill C-15 could fill prisons

By Carlito Pablo

Will Bill C-15 kill the twin scourge of illegal drugs and gang violence?

Libby Davies

NDP MP, Vancouver East

"There's a lot of information, both in the United States and in Canada, that shows that mandatory minimum sentencing regimes for drug offences are ineffective. This is all about window-dressing for the Conservatives' crime agenda. They want to impress people with their tough-on-crime approach. One thing that will happen is that it could very much overcrowd our prisons. We find the bill to be misdirected and based on a very faulty premise. It's based on the U.S.'s war on drugs, which has been a complete failure."

Ed Fast

Conservative MP, Abbotsford

"What Bill C-15 does is it's connecting the sale of drugs to aggravating factors. If there's a sale or production or growing of drugs that occurs and violence is present, we will put those guys behind bars. But we also want to make sure that low-level dealers that are dealing in drugs simply because they're addicted can actually get the help that they deserve. We believe it's a balanced approach. We're not going after the marijuana users. We're going after the guys who really present an ongoing danger to our community."

Ujjal Dosanjh

Liberal MP, Vancouver South

"Bill[s] C-14 and [C-]15? We have said that we'll support both of them. We agree with tougher penalties for serious and violent and chronic offenders. But that alone isn't going to do the job. That's why we believe this government is failing significantly in their drive to deal with the issue of crime. They're failing Canadians because they're not emphasizing crime-preventing, they're not providing resources for youth programs, they're not providing actual police officers on the ground, [and] they're not providing prosecutors."

Adrianne Carr

Deputy leader, Green Party of Canada

"The Green party doesn't support mandatory sentencing because it has proven to not work. It's coming from this tough-on-crime perspective. What we've seen is that our court system wastes extraordinarily high resources in prosecuting the petty criminals involved in drug cases, particularly marijuana. We should be legalizing marijuana, which has been suggested by the Senate of Canada and the Fraser Institute, and these are hardly radical institutions. What we have to do is delink the profit

motive from drugs."

On March 2, the Pew Center on the States, a Washington, D.C.--based think tank, released a report on the staggering growth of the American correctional system.

Entitled One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections, the report noted that "sentencing and release laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s put so many more people behind bars that last year the incarcerated population reached 2.3 million and, for the first time, one in 100 adults was in prison or jail."

It also cited the tremendous increase in the number of people on probation or parole, such that "combined with those in prison and jail, a stunning 1 in every 31 adults, or 3.2 percent, is under some form of correctional control."

Why is this relevant to Canada?

"We only need to go south of the border and see a nation that enacted mandatory minimums related to drug offences from the mid-1980s on," criminologist Susan Boyd told the Georgia Straight. "It didn't reduce violence and drug use. So here we are saying, 'We're going to do this.' "

Boyd -- an associate professor at UVic and research fellow at the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C. -- was referring to the reintroduction in Parliament by the Conservative government of a bill that proposes mandatory minimum jail sentences for drug offenders.

If passed into law, Bill C-15 would, among its other provisions, throw people caught with one marijuana plant into the slammer for a minimum of six months. If growing a single plant is done on a property that belongs to another person or in an area where it may present a hazard to children, minimum jail time is nine months.

Worse, the bill seeks to increase the maximum penalty for this particular offence to 14 years.

Vancouver's so-called Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, who is fighting extradition on charges of selling marijuana seeds to American growers, is a potential U.S. prison statistic.

Emery was handing out leaflets condemning drug prohibition, along with his wife, Jodie, on the south side of the city when the Straight asked him about Bill C-15. "Anything that puts more people in jail for drugs is going to fill prisons," he said. "It's a very expensive and failed policy that will only bring us more misery."

The Pew Center on the States report pointed out that many states in the U.S. "appear to have reached a 'tipping point' where additional incarceration will have little if any effect on crime".

In Washington state, which shares a border with B.C., the report stated, "from 1980 to 2001, the benefit-to-cost ratio for drug offenders plummeted from $9.22 to $0.37.

"That is, for every one dollar invested in new prison beds for drug offenders, state taxpayers get only 37 cents in averted crime," it noted. "An updated analysis from 2006 found that incarceration of offenders convicted of violent offenses remained a positive net benefit, while property and drug offenders offered negative returns."

Conservative Abbotsford MP Ed Fast deflected criticism that mandatory jail times haven't worked in the U.S.

"First of all, on the issue of deterrence there's contradicting evidence," Fast told the Straight. "I don't base my support for the legislation on the deterrent effect. I base it on the prophylactic effect of the legislation. Prophylactic means taking repeat, violent offenders out of our communities for longer periods of time."

Bill C-15 is a reincarnation of Bill C-26, which the Conservatives introduced in November 2007.

In February 2008, a few months after Bill C-26 was tabled in Parliament, Boyd started sending Prime Minister Stephen Harper a weekly letter in an attempt to educate the Conservative leader about harm reduction and drug regulation.

Boyd did this for a year, and she sent her 52nd and final letter in early February this year. Bill C-15 was introduced on February 27, a day after the Conservatives filed Bill C-14, which toughens penalties for gang-associated violent activities.

As an educator, Boyd has this to say about mentoring Harper: "The prime minister gets a failing grade on drug policy."

The economics of prisons in Canada

} Total correctional-services expenditures in 2005-06: almost $3 billion

} Share spent on custodial services or prisons: 71 percent

} Associated policing and court costs in 2005-06: more than $10 billion

} Number of correctional facilities in Canada in 2005-06: 192

} Annual cost of incarcerating a federal female prisoner in

2004-05: $150,000 to $250,000

} Annual cost of incarcerating a federal male prisoner in 2004-05: $87,665

} Daily cost of incarcerating a provincial prisoner in 2004-05: $141.78

} Daily cost of alternatives such as probation, bail supervision,

and community supervision: $5 to $25

Source: prisonjustice.ca

Obama Is A Criminal

There, did that get your attention? I was thinking about how President Obama talked about smoking pot when he was younger. Where would he be today if he was one of the many who were arrested for smoking pot? He'd have a criminal record, no? Can you be President if you have a criminal record? Obama admitted to smoking pot, therefore he must have been in possession of marijuana. He broke a federal law.

I am not saying Obama should be impeached or otherwise held accountable. I think he should just decriminalize marijuana and relegate it in the same category as say, strawberries. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been ruined over simple possession. Obama has the power to undo these injustices. Instead, he puts more money into the losing cause of "The War on Drugs". Go ahead and have you political fun, but at least get marijuana out of the illegal drug category.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Monday, March 9, 2009

Oh Canada. Our home and backward land.

I spent the weekend in agony. No, I did not injure myself. I read countless articles by every active politician I could fine. Very few made much sense. We seem to be governed by blind dinosaurs, just waiting for the world to end. I just can't figure it. The latest is Bill C-15. Mandatory Prison sentences. I agree with harsh sentences when they are deserved, but am slow to judge because of all those jailed unjustly. What is jail for? It is for no other reason than to keep the criminals off the street. If you come at me with the rehabilitation argument I will just walk away. Prison and rehabilitation are two words that do not go together, like government and common sense. Write your MP, write your local newspaper, yell at your friends to help do something to stop Bill C-15 and anything that closely resembles it!

Dang, now I am ranting. See what even an intro to a video will do? Please, watch this short video. Post your comment. I really want to hear what you have to say about it.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

As painful as it is to read....

It is this kind of drivel that sets us back a few decades. Marijuana CANNOT be associated with other illegal drugs, nor can it be associated with most legal drugs. Marijuana stands on it's own and until people can wrap their heads around that we will always have "false prophets" such as this bonehead. That said, go ahead and read this article without bias. LOL



Drug legalization lobby lacks business plan
3/4/09|North Shore News| by Wallace Gilby Craig - North Shore News

PUBLIC outrage over recent gang murders by feuding traffickers in B.C. Bud and other illicit drugs has forced the federal government to target gangsters in upcoming changes to our criminal law.

But according to our local drug-legalization crowd, led by marijuana's false prophets, those feds just don't understand the way we choose to live in la-la-land. This clutch of deceitful addicts and their myopic supporters propose legalization of cannabis and other illicit drugs, and the introduction of a bureaucratic system of drug regulation and distribution.

Their dream-world fantasy is based on a misty notion that illicit drugs could be produced and distributed like alcohol; that by the stroke of a pen the multi-billion dollar gangland drug manufacturing/importing/exporting business would be transformed into a legal, manageable and taxable government monopoly. Yet to be explained by marijuana's false prophets: How a pussycat government monopoly hopes to persuade gangsters to trade in their guns for bongs, become choir boys, and refrain from continuing to sell drugs in an inevitable black market.

Fat chance, I say.

Marijuana's false prophets send a steady stream of misinformation about a supposed similarity between the brief period when alcohol was prohibited and our hundred years of criminalization of illicit drugs, always ending with the same catchphrase: Let's take control of marijuana -- tax it, standardize and regulate it.

On Feb. 27, marijuana's false prophets were on the street outside the Vancouver police station in front of television cameras with signs proclaiming Gang Violence Is Caused by Drug Prohibition . . . End Drug Prohibition to End Gang Violence.

It is a false message. Gang violence and murder will not end with fairy-tale legalization. International crime syndicates, coupled with source countries around the world profiting in the production of narcotics, will continue to target Canada and the United States. Legalization would cause them to increase their activity to accommodate an increase in the numbers of addicts in Canada.

On March 1, criminologist Neil Boyd, perched in the surreal world of academia atop Burnaby Mountain, was interviewed by the Province. Boyd apparently said that the new anti-drug law fails to address the reality that prohibiting cannabis doesn't work, and is out of step with the threat the substance poses.

"It makes sense to focus on the issue of violence, but we've had so many reports at the same time that the criminal law is not an appropriate response to cannabis use and production," said Boyd.

Boyd is a thoughtful and knowledgeable person who understands all aspects of the criminal justice system. It is not clear from his remarks whether Boyd supports legalizing only possession of marijuana or whether he proposes decriminalization of possession of all drugs. A thornier question is whether Boyd advocates that Canada decriminalize trafficking in all illicit drugs.

The question remains: Of all the "many reports" Boyd refers to, is one of them a detailed and comprehensive business plan for the federal and provincial governments to take over the production and distribution of all illicit drugs sourced in Canada or exported into Canada by source countries around the world?

I am convinced that there is no such comprehensive business plan in existence laying out, in detail, a viable transition from the chaotic sprawl of criminal production and trafficking to a staid agency of government.

In 2005, England's Anthony Daniels, physician, prison doctor and essayist, writing under the pseudonym of Theodore Dalrymple, published Our Culture, What's Left of It, a collection of essays on a wide range of subjects including the legalization of drugs.

Two brief quotations bear directly on any debate in British Columbia:

"In claiming that prohibition, not the drugs themselves, is the problem . . . many . . . even (some) policemen have said 'the war on drugs is lost.' But to demand a yes or no answer to the question 'Is the war against drugs being won?' is like demanding a yes or no answer to the question 'Have you stopped beating your wife yet?' Never can an unimaginative and fundamentally stupid metaphor have exerted a more baleful effect upon proper thought.

"Analogies with the Prohibition era, often drawn by those who would legalize drugs, are false and inexact: it is one thing to attempt to ban a substance that has been in customary use for centuries by at least nine-tenths of the adult population, and quite another to retain a ban on substances that are still not in customary use, in an attempt to ensure that they never do become customary. Surely we have already slid down enough slippery slopes in the last 30 years without looking for more such slopes to slide down."

Dalrymple's observations are apropos to today's campaign of drug legalizers, including marijuana's false prophets, to destroy the moral and ethical integrity of our precious individual liberty by including in it an absolute and unfettered right to dally with marijuana, chemical drugs and narcotics.

Wake up Canada! Dedicated narcissistic marijuana users and psychosocial hard drug abusers are parasitical citizens, engaged solely in their own interests and pleasures.

Their creed: I care for nothing but myself.



Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Marijuana_Headline_News/~3/KpXKJahMq6s/115747-can-drug-legalization-lobby-lacks-business-plan.htm

Sunday, March 1, 2009

An American view, but worth the read.

Thanks to CJ117 at www.marijuana.com forums.

SO -- I have a lot of comments to make on this entire thread... I guess I'll have to start at the beginning.

As for the growing of marijuana... I read a lot of comments about how people wouldn't buy marijuana, they'd just grow their own. I have to rebut that with the fact that Tobacco isn't very hard to grow. And yet how many people do you know that grow their own cigs? I don't know ANYONE. I've never even heard people discussing it.
If marijuana is legalized, people have the option of growing their own, but they'd almost definitely prefer to buy it. It's SO much easier, and we all know americans are fucking lazy as hell and would much rather fork over a few bucks to get their "fix" than wait 2-6 months for their crop to shell out. It's common sense people. Obviously, there'd be people like buzzby and possibly myself who would really love to try growing our own. It's an experience all in itself. But the vast majority of people would end up stopping by the liquor store instead of Home Depot Garden Center.

As for the "increase in consumption"... think about it - people are going to be curious to try this stuff that's had such a huge political fiasco surrounding it. People are BOUND to pick up a pack and give it a shot. It's a given that more people will begin to smoke weed, or at least try it. I'm willing to bet many people will like it. But as soon as all the regulations change regarding employment, driving; the social policies we instill on one another; studies emerge, etc. you have to realize there would be a massive culture reformation surrounding this plant. As it has in other countries, marijuana use would find its equilibrium in our society and dwindle down to a reasonable statistic.

The DUI issue -- Consider that not everyone that drinks and then drives, and then is pulled over is immediately arrested. I can drive perfectly fine after chugging a 24 oz bottle of smirnoff (yeah gimmie all the shit about it not being beer its still alcohol dammit!) and I don't drink at all. I have zero tolerance for the stuff so it hits me hard.
This is why we have sobriety tests. Police will undoubtedly devise tests and mandates that surround the pot issue. I can drive fine when I'm high. But I get to a certain point and I don't feel so up to driving. It's scary fun, but its a risk I'd really rather not take. If you're really baked and unable to drive, you're obviously gonna get busted. If you're able to function behind the wheel, that would be reflected in your sobriety test.

Additionally, it would be wise to consider the following: Do you feel up to driving when you're blasted? Isn't there a point you REALIZE you'd rather not drive? People who smoke weed don't go out and do the same stupid shit they do while drunk. It doesn't have that same effect like alcohol that makes you feel daring and destroys your reasoning skills (due to the fact that its KILLING YOUR BRAIN!!!). For those who do, as I'm sure there's exceptions to that observation, the sobriety tests police would administer would surely expose that fact and said offenders would be punished accordingly. It's COMMON SENSE.

One more thing I've gotta say about drug policy in the workplace... I think it would be ridiculous if companies were to continue the same mandates about marijuana after the legalization. Consider that people are not tested for alcohol in the workplace. Rightly so, intoxication is grounds for dismissal. So you don't often see beer bottles in office cubicles. The same should be for marijuana. Responsible people who use during off hours should be allowed to continue to do so. I see many lawsuits in the future of legalization revolving around this issue should companies not revise their laws. I feel sobriety is necessary in the workplace. I think most people do. But after hours it shouldn't matter.

As for this bill, I feel it is ABSOLUTELY VITAL that we EDUCATE the public about Marijuana. We can't just expect this bill to PASS ON ITS OWN. People are STILL IGNORANT of the TRUTHS about marijuana. Its effects, its contents, w/e.. people still believe the myths they've been told all their lives. WE HAVE TO DO OUR PART TO CHANGE THIS. If we don't, if we sit on our asses, this bill is BOUND FOR FAILURE. THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW. It's now or never. (or maybe again and again and again but seriously let's put a stop to that!)

CMON GUYS I WANT TO SEE THIS AS MUCH AS YOU DO!!!

NOW GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND SPREAD THE WORD!!!!!!!!
__________________
"In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded."
Legalize! Regulate! EDUCATE!

About Me

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I am a single dad. I like playing on the computer. I smoke pot. I am slowly becoming a legalization activist. I am an open book, but only if you ask.