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.

BC Bud should be legal for responsible adult use say former Vancouver mayors, Marc Emery would strongly agree!

It’s at times like these that we have no choice but to take a hard look at how we spend our public dollars. It’s at times like these that society needs to have that hard conversation with itself about what is truly important, and what can go. And nothing could deserve to go more than marijuana prohibition. Cannabis prohibition has been an enormous waste of money and lives. And as of today 4 former mayors of Vancouver BC have added their voices to the chorus of Canadians calling for an end to our harmful marijuana policy. They have authored an open letter that you all must read.

Thanks to great Canadians like these former mayors we can get a real discussion going about the harms that our prohibition has caused and will continue to cause. Lies and fear have permeated this debate for far too long, its time to break the silence! Please consider putting some of your money where your heart is and donate to stop violence BC – with your support this debate will start to get louder and louder…

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!

Why it took the NAACP so long to join the voices condemning the epic failure of the drug war is not clear. I suppose it was because they did not think it wise to wade into a debate over legalizing drug use and distribution. I guess they could not stand by any longer and ignore the most important civil rights battle the NAACP has had to fight since the civil rights battles of the 60′s.

Nothing in recent history has harmed the colored community more than the drug war. Much like the harm done to Native Americans when the US was being settled, the damage that has been done by the drug war is going to take many generations to undo. And that work can’t begin until the current drug laws are abolished and branded a complete failure so nobody ever considers going back to them.

Studies show that all racial groups abuse drugs at similar rates, but the numbers also show that African Americans, Hispanics and other people of color are stopped, searched, arrested, charged, convicted, and sent to prison for drug-related charges at a much higher rate,” stated Alice Huffman, President of the California State Conference of the NAACP. “This dual system of drug law enforcement that serves to keep African-Americans and other minorities under lock and key and in prison must be exposed and eradicated.

Clearly the drug war has been lost – why must we continue to wage it? The fact guns are now being smuggled in mass quantities to Mexico for use in smuggling tons of drugs into the US should be all the reason we need to end the drug war. The status quo is not working!

We need to refocus on helping addicts, educating kids, and providing treatment to those that want it. Its time to stop filling our prisons, breaking up families, financing gangsters, shooting up our streets, building dangerous drug labs, and making drugs easily available to our kids.

And some people think legalization would be worse – I find that really hard to believe.

When our failed drug laws are trying to encarcarate people like her we know we’ve gone way off track…

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!

Tommy Chong and Dana Larsen - Vote Dana for BC NDP Leader

Dana Larsen is running for the leadership of the BC NDP party. For those that know Dana this is awesome news! Dana is one of the most dedicated cannabis legalization activists in the Country and has opened seed banks, cannabis dispensaries, started cannabis magazines, organized rallies, marched in protests, you get the idea.

Dana is going to bring marijuana legalization to the forefront in BC politics. This is going to be awesome. We can only hope that he gets elected leader. And you can help ensure that he does by joining the BC NDP. Only BC NDP party members can vote for Dana and you need to be a member before January 17th. So click here to join the BC NDP now!

Aren’t these getting to be a bit stale? At what point will the police realize that they are starting to look like buffoons for having not won the war on drugs yet (after spending trillions of our tax dollars trying). If this is a winnable endeavor then the cops better start showing some progress, not perpetual tables full of drugs and guns. Doing the same photo ops year after year after year is simply showing everyone that you’re not making any significant progress. And that fact should be all we need at this point to try something other than outright prohibition and jail time as punishment for drug use.

And then there’s these reality TV police shows. They all started with Cops back in the 80′s which lead to our latest crop of police theatre in DEA or Police Woman of <put your  favorite county name here> County. Or better yet, Steven Seagal – Law Man. What a load of crap.

If you haven’t noticed the vast majority of these shows focus on drug crime. Possession, trafficking, crime committed to get drugs, crime committed to protect drug trafficking turf, etc. If you actually stop and look at it, these shows are doing nothing more than profiting off the failure of the war on drugs. It’s almost as if some evil genius designed this situation.

Police get paid to wage the war on drugs. TV stations get more money when reporting salacious stories like drug busts. The public loves drug news stories because the public loves drugs but because drugs are illegal and carry a stigma the public remains silent about the exploitation that the police and tv networks are engaging in through their collaboration in airing these shows. And thus the cycle continues.

It really is disgusting if you care to think about it.