News

Clock Strikes 4:20 And Smoke Fills Air on Parliament Hill Thousands of people were on Parliament Hill to smoke a joint or otherwise support legalizing marijuana in Canada on Sunday.

Some 30,000 People Take Part As Pot Purveyors and Practitioners Light Up Peacefully Easter Sunday in Vancouver featured a holy grail of a different nature.

Thousands Toke Up a Storm in Pro-Pot Rally at Yonge-Dundas Square Thousands of marijuana activists gave new meaning to "Easter grass" on Sunday.

After Madison Walker quit heroin, he urged Connor Brennan to get clean, too. Brennan, 20, thought about Walker, who had grown up in the same Fairfax County subdivision and was sober, healthy, close with his parents again. Look how happy he is, Brennan thought. I want to be like that.

Opinions

As trip-hop music played through booming speakers, sun-drenched parkgoers on Sunday sauntered through Civic Center with the pungent smell of marijuana hanging in the air.

Rulings on Medicaid Expansion and Traces of Pot in Drivers' Blood Are Sure to Bring More Drama. A pair of rulings from Arizona courts leave the state's residents wondering what's next. The most far-reaching - and potentially costly - - comes from the Arizona Court of Appeals, which reinstated a lawsuit filed by GOP lawmakers on the losing side of last year's vote to expand the state's Medicaid program.

The Evidence Shows That Enthusiasm for Medical Marijuana Has Outpaced the Scientific Evidence in Favour of It

It Works Well in Palliative Care, and the College Des Medecins Du Quebec Should Show More of an Open Mind Toward It

Letters

Jeffrey Toobin's piece on the inmates and staff at the Baltimore City Detention Center illustrates the devastation of human lives and communities which decades of drug prohibition have wrought ("This Is My Jail," April 14th). Most American drug-prohibition enforcement is in minority communities, even though drug use among minorities is virtually no higher than it is in the white population. With a large percentage of the young men from minority neighborhoods locked up, and few opportunities for young women to make a living wage as anything other than their jailers, sex, romance, smuggling, and gangs within detention facilities should come as no surprise. Even after huge expenditures, the erosion of civil rights across the country, and the disruption of communities and families, drugs are still available both outside and inside our jails and prisons. It is baffling that anyone would think that mere regime and policy changes could improve the conditions in jails, communities, or in the country at large.

Regarding "Medical pot push driven by profit": Speaking as a lobbyist/advocate for law enforcement in Congress, Douglas MacKinnon sounds like a lobbyist for Big Pharma.

Re: "Is medical marijuana effective?" (Opinion, April 18) It was good to see a physician taking a public stand against the position of the College des medecins du Quebec on both the safety and benefits of medical pot.

EDITOR: I'm writing about Parker Anderson's outstanding April 10 letter, "It's time to end the War on Drugs."

We've always had it. We're slowly getting rid of it. My dad was forced to write right-handed. He was a natural lefty.

A sane or moral argument to continue cannabis prohibition doesn't exist. Another important reason to end cannabis prohibition that doesn't get mentioned is because prohibition increases hard drug addiction rates. It puts citizens who choose to use the relatively safe plant into contact with people who often also sell hard drugs.

Dear Editor: It was good to see Gov. Scott Walker sign legislation legalizing a form of medical marijuana to treat pediatric seizure disorders. However, Walker's signature does not mean that the children, whose stories moved usually stern lawmakers to tears, will see their medicine anytime soon.