It warms my heart to see that the professional medical community is finally going to assist in the effort to end the harmful prohibition of cannabis. Please support Stop the Violence BC.

It is finally over! After 4 years of fighting our own Federal government for the right to save the lives of injection drug addicts INSITE has been granted the right to remain open permanently.

A unanimous decision by the Supreme Court of Canada has clearly stated that the Federal Government does not have the authority to pass laws that take away a Canadian citizens right to access health care services. Even if those health care services are contrary to the Governments anti drug strategy.

The days of our government trying to make drug use as harmful as possible for the user are over. The age old argument that making drug use as unsafe as possible is a strong deterrent to use is no longer acceptable. That argument will certainly not hold any weight in a Canadian court of law going forward.

This decision saves lives, reduces crime in the neighborhood, takes open air drug use off the street, enables treatment to be more effective, gets used needles off the sidewalks and most importantly to me it sets a strong legal precedent. It will be much more difficult for drug prohibition to remain in place after this decision. I can think of many ways that health care services could be set up for all sorts of drug use. For example we all know smoking is harmful, so why not have health services for our cannabis using population? They could access vaporizers instead of rolling up a joint which is far more healthy. Certainly we’re going to see crack users get off the street with the opening of safe inhalation centers.

This decision is a win win, and for those who have opposed it – man would I like to send you the bill for the millions the Federal Government spent trying to stop this from happening. Get out of the way of progress – the future is a world without drug prohibition!

All members of the club have to be referred to the dispensary by a doctor. Once a person is a member they gain access to at least a dozen different strains of cannabis, both indica and sativa, as well as a wide array of edible and topical treatments created from the cannabis plant.

I’ve got a clip of the CBC here that looks at MedPotNow, but as usual starts the segment off on a negative, fear mongering tone. Once the viewer starts to watch the story it turns out to be quite positive and not something to fear. After all, these non profit operations are trying to help people!

The most recent sign that the massive failure called the war on drugs has no plans of succeeding anytime soon was today’s media parade by police in California – showing off the nations largest ever crystal meth seizure.

Now some might say awesome – they got 600 pounds of meth of the street. Sure that’s a good thing but the reality of how futile the bust was is reflected clearly in the quoted police officer’s own comment.

Sheriff’s officials said “they had no illusions the huge bust would stem the flow of drugs from Mexico. These organizations are all over the place out there, folks,”

And that says it all.

After all these years, and all the billions of tax dollars spent, we are in the worst situation ever when it comes to the damage drugs are doing to our society. And the irony is, it isn’t the drugs doing it. It’s the negative side effects of drug prohibition that are causing gang violence, dangerous drug labs, child drug dealers, billionaire drug lords, corrupt police, enriched enemies over sea’s, and whored out drug addicts that get no treatment because of police get all the drug policy money and only crumbs being allocated to treatment and harm reduction.

And the list goes on folks.

How can we continue to claim that the current approach to drug policy is the best approach. It is clearly one of the worst ways of dealing with drug use in a society, ever.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

In November California will be voting for the outright legalization of marijuana use by adults. I can’t wait to see how this unfolds. Even if it doesn’t pass this is just step #1. It will be on the ballot every year until it passes. And the legalization will spread – this is just the first nail in the coffin.

Watch you’ll see…

The University of British Columbia has produced a report which has found that the prohibition of recreational drug use by adults has failed at it’s primary goal. And in case you’ve forgotten what that goal was, we’re supposed to be trying to reduce the availability of drugs on our streets.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Well, as the news clip points out, we haven’t reduced drug availability. We’ve instead made drugs more available, of higher potency, lower price, yet with higher impurity levels ultimately making the drugs more dangerous than they were to begin with.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, we’ve enriched the most vile members of our society through the lure of easy drug trade riches. After all, millions can be made by anyone who is willing to risk their freedom in exchange for extreme wealth. As long as you are willing to kill for it, its yours for the taking. That’s the proposition drug prohibition makes to the desperate, the poor and the greedy among us.

And did you get a load of the cops in that news clip? Kash Heed – how can you say shit like that and keep a straight face? You know what you said is an outright lie. And even if you thought you were being honest, and your 30 years of policing did convince you that prohibition is the only appropriate policy, don’t ya think that maybe your perspective might be a bit tainted by having to deal with the ugly side of drug prohibition day in and day out? Perhaps you’re having a hard time visualizing a world without prohibition because you have lived it’s ugly side for too long. But I think it’s much more likely that you’re just being a weasel politician and doing what is popular and not what is right.

And Tim Shields of the R.C.M.P. – please stick to enforcing our laws, not commenting on their validity. That’s what politicians are supposed to be paid to do. When they decide to show up for work. And ultimately that’s the reason we still have to endure the drug war despite all the mounting evidence against it – our politicians are fucking useless. Until they start doing what’s right instead of what’s politically easy we’re going to see our streets get more violent, more drug filled, and ultimately we’ll all suffer at the hands of organized crime in one way or another.”

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

For those of you reading this who are not Canadian (or are lazy Canadians who really ought to know more about their Countries politics) here’s a little background. Right now Canada has at it’s helm the most socially conservative government it has had in my lifetime.

This Government is headed by a man named Stephen Harper, our Prime Minister. Head Douche Bag. This is a man who is on record saying that he believes global warming is a socialist scheme designed to transfer riches from wealthy nations to poorer nations. And he’s shown his disdain by doing nothing to address global warming in all the years he has been in office.

This is a man that out of self interest shut down Canadian democracy to avoid having to turn over incriminating documents that would prove him to be guilty of war crimes. And he shut down parliament on New Years Eve, “”when nobody would notice”".

This is the same man that said he would never appoint senators to Canada’s upper chamber, yet he just appointed more than any previous Prime Minister. He voiced his disdain for this practice for many, many years so this is unbelievable hypocrisy.

This is the same man that told Canadians repeatedly that the economy was fine and it was a good time to buy stocks well into the recession while promising to never go into deficit. And then delivering the largest deficit in Canadian history as we spiraled into recession.

This is the man that promised he would never tax income trusts during an election and then promptly taxed them after; draining people of their savings.

And now Stephen Harper is going to challenge the BC Supreme court decision to allow Insite to operate indefinitely. Yep, here we go again. This will be the second time they appealed court decisions to allow Insite to remain open. This time they are taking it to the Supreme Court of Canada. I can only hope the court decides to not even hear the case but that would be unlikely.

Harper’s actions towards Insite have shown his true colors when it comes to drug policy solutions that work. Instead of following the science and evidence that supports Insite he chooses to ignore, accuse, insult, fight and pursue failed prohibitionist drug policies. All because he is opposed to anything that would weaken his tough on crime, tough on drugs platform.

Never would I have imagined that Canada’s Government would be so ideologically driven as to not care if its citizens faced death and disease due to its laws. Instead of embracing solutions that help addicts they want them to face the harms of drug use, as a deterent to drug use. Such stupidity. Clearly they have forgotten why we are waging their stupid drug war in the first place. To keep people from being harmed by drugs!

I don’t know about you but I am so fucking tired of Stephen Harper and his pathetic excuse for a Government. I think more and more Canadians are ready for an election so bring it on. We can’t afford to toy around with giving Harper a majority, imagine what he would do if he had complete control. So get out and vote next election people – it’s time for new Government in Canada.