Meanwhile, the sheer magnitude of the medicinal cannabis market in California is spawning ancillary businesses and industries, once again demonstrating that cannabis policy should be the domain of economics and public health, not the criminal law.
As our friends at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition say, "You can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction." Yet another Canadian who would like to join his family in the United States has discovered the long memory of the law.
An interesting so-called "debate" erupted last week at the National Post, one of two national newspapers in Canada, when a regular columnist, Barbara Kay, criticized the editorial board for endorsing cannabis legalization. The board responded with a challenge to Ms. Kay to justify prohibiting cannabis while alcohol remains legal, and she took the bait. Now Ms. Kay's son, columnist Jonathon Kay, has joined the discussion with a critique of his mother's pro-alcohol argument.
]]>The Mexican government will gladly take all the money the Colossus of the north will send, and prohibitionists in Washington like sending Mexico hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer money each year. Because this is money spent to "fight drugs", all is well. But given a backdrop of escalated violence in Mexico this year, some in the U.S. Congress want assurances the money won't be used to violate human rights. To the Mexican government, all this looks too much like "certification", so the U.S. can keep its money, if there are such sovereignty-violating strings attached.
Well, OK, says the Director General of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, Dionisio Santiago: the police do, in fact "plant evidence." But only for really good reasons, you see. Only for bad people, who are "known" to police. How could police prove anything against bad people, if police can't plant a little evidence, anyway? Not to worry, "PDEA operatives make sure that they won't know that we put planted evidence." It's all for the kids, anyway. "We are doing this because we want to neutralize big personalities engaged in the illegal drug trade which destroys the future of the youth," said the Director General.
And finally, a plea from Liz Evans, nurse and executive director of the society which operates Insite, the supervised injection center in Vancouver, Canada. Denouncing the "collective ignorance", over the Harper government decision to appeal a B.C. Supreme Court ruling allowing Insite to remain open, Evans writes, "Judge Ian Pitfield of the B. C. Supreme Court demonstrated his understanding of a principle that Mr. Harper seems incapable of grasping: Addiction is a complex, chronic and relapsing disease. Justice Pitfield's ruling recognizes that Insite's program deserves protection under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."
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