cannabisnews.com: Chasing Potheads Called Waste of Time Chasing Potheads Called Waste of Time Posted by FoM on November 05, 2001 at 07:13:48 PT By Shannon Boklaschuk, Edmonton Sun Source: Edmonton Sun Canadian cops could catch more terrorists if they didn't have to waste time chasing potheads, a Canadian Alliance MP says. Keith Martin is sponsoring a private member's bill to decriminalize small-scale marijuana possession, a move he said would free up scarce police resources to fight international terrorism. "It will save about $150 million a year in Canada, I figure," the B.C. MP said yesterday. "That money could be used to focus our police and judicial systems on dealing with more serious criminals like terrorists, rapists, murderers and pedophiles." But even now that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have put police resources at a premium, Martin's proposal is still drawing fire from some in the Liberal party and from some of his own Alliance colleagues. Edmonton Centre-East MP Peter Goldring said that while decriminalizing weed might free up police resources, the health care system would be furthered taxed by an increased number of potheads. "It's an intoxicant. There's some wild and crazy strains out there," he said. "People will be taken into emergency rooms for more auto accidents. Pot comes back to you - you put the music up and you start bopping to it. You don't need that in high-speed traffic. You're going to increase the number of deaths." Liberal Senator Tommy Banks, a member of a special Senate committee that's reviewing Canada's anti-drug legislation and policies on cannabis, said he fears an explosion in cross-border shopping trips by American hemp fanciers if Canada loosens its pot law. "You can't imagine what would be happening at border crossings. Americans would be flocking to Canada to buy pot," Banks said. "It's all very well to say pot is a harmless drug, but it has more cancer-causing agents than cigarettes." Martin said Canada spends about $200 million a year in law enforcement and court costs related to drug possession. About 75% of those possession charges have to do with weed. While Martin is "totally opposed to legalizing pot," he said pot possession charges shouldn't go through the "expensive court system." Rather, people found with dope should simply be ticketed so police can go after "people who are a danger to society." Martin's bill will be debated on Wednesday and could be voted on as earlier as December. Banks's committee report is due to come back to the Senate in August 2002. Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB) Author: Shannon Boklaschuk, Edmonton SunPublished: Monday, November 5, 2001 Copyright: 2001 Canoe Limited PartnershipContact: sun.letters ccinet.ab.ca Website: http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonSun/ Related Articles & Web Site:FTE's Canadian Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htmMarijuana Tea Houses for the Ill Open in B.C. http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11248.shtmlCanada Goes to Pot - We Should Follow http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10487.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #12 posted by E_Johnson on November 05, 2001 at 17:56:59 PT If pot is supposed to slow people down... then why do the police have to spend so much time "chasing potheads"?Can't they freakin' catch them, then?Maybe that's why the DEA goes after the medical users. Cancer can really slow a person down. [ Post Comment ] Comment #11 posted by New Mexican on November 05, 2001 at 14:11:25 PT Let's follow the Pied Piper! 'Man Arrested delivering Pot Plants to Irish Government':here's the link!http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=15517&group=webcast [ Post Comment ] Comment #10 posted by Lehder on November 05, 2001 at 13:00:17 PT water city water comes from wells too. the bath and dish water i use now come from a well but have to be treated a whole lot to get the iron out. i could start a small steel mill with it. but i have no idea what drugs or other chemicals might be in there and stick with distilled for drinking. most people probably know already that "bottled water" in the stores is often water straight some the tap in some city. it's been a while since i've been in montana - about 77 maybe - at the, i think the full name is?, glacier-waterton international peace park. but i remember the water very well. it had a special green - not blue - very pretty green flowing in the rivers and streams - it almost glowed!, deep crystalline, magic, and was even prettier and looked purer than in the mountain streams of colorado and other western states. i drank plenty of it partly because it looked so cool and pure, but mostly because it was so pretty. some other travelers had some pills that looked pretty, too, and we had a nice time.oh - almost forgot - Paxil is a registered trademark of GlaxoSmithKline. [ Post Comment ] Comment #9 posted by FoM on November 05, 2001 at 12:46:32 PT Fresh Water We get our water from a 136 foot well and we are the second highest peak in our county. I am so glad we have good water. People in the town we moved to when we moved out here in the 70s are getting cancer at a very high rate. The water isn't safe because the EPA didn't pass it but people still are drinking it. Scary stuff. [ Post Comment ] Comment #8 posted by Ethan Russo MD on November 05, 2001 at 12:34:23 PT: Thanks, Lehder It is times like this that I am glad that we get our water out of a well in the mountains. There's nothing between us and the grizzly bears, and they eat organic! [ Post Comment ] Comment #7 posted by Lehder on November 05, 2001 at 12:22:16 PT U.S. water supply doped with corruption and corrupted with legal dope.I've been drinking exclusively distilled water for a few years because the city supply was shown to have arsenic and somethin' else in it. But now there's even PAXIL in the water pouring from your faucet. And every other kind of legal dope:The good news is that there is no acute peril, as there is from fecal bacteria or mercury. The medicine in our water is not present at levels that will produce immediate effects. We're talking about a few parts per billion or trillion of drugs like Paxil, Keflex or amoxicillin. But the daily ingestion of these unprescribed nanococktails does pose potential long-term perils. The presence of trace amounts of antibiotics in the water supply may lead to resistant strains of bacteria.It gets a lot worse as you read on. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/10/25/drugs_water/index.htmlHere's what the same corporations who control the pols and power the War on Drugs are doing about it: One of the most eloquent speakers in Minneapolis, a drug company vice president, argued that the pharmaceutical industry has already given the federal government all the data it will ever need about the environmental fate of its products. "There is no regulation that requires new studies to be undertaken," he told the scientists. All the relevant information is already in FDA files, he explained. Unfortunately for environmentalists and scientists trying to figure out what drugs do in the environment, most of the data is proprietary, safely locked away in FDA vaults. U.S. officials are uneasy discussing these dangers. [ Post Comment ] Comment #6 posted by Elfman_420 on November 05, 2001 at 10:21:24 PT WOW! Prof Maclean said a study of blood samples taken by South Australian hospitals from people injured in road accidents found marijuana was the second most common drug, after alcohol, in the bloodstream. However those with marijuana in their bloodstream were at fault in less than half of the accidents.-Refer to comment #3Wow! I have never thought about that before. Remember all those articles that said marijuana is in a high percentage of people's bloodstream who come into the emergency room from car accidents, so they blame it on marijuana? We would sit and yell at them for making false statistics. They never gave the statistic that gave the percent of people who were at fault & had marijuana in their bloodstream. Like I believe I said before, when they gave some crazy statistic that said 39% of the people entering the emergency room from car accidents had marijuana in their bloodstream, I said all that told me was 39% of the population smokes.Anyways, thanks for the article puff_tuff! [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by JR Bob Dobbs on November 05, 2001 at 10:10:37 PT Imagine all the people >>"You can't imagine what would be happening at border crossings. Americans would be flocking to Canada to buy pot," Banks said. Sounds about like I imagine it. Who is this supposed to scare? The Canadians, who love taking American tourist dollars, or the US Government, whose Zero Tolerance policies got us into this mess in the first place? And how big a problem does Canada have with 19 and 20 year old Americans crossing the border for alcohol? [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by Sam Adams on November 05, 2001 at 09:53:37 PT has it alway been like this? Back during pre-civil rights days, did papers print up stuff like "There are some crazy Negroes out there, we can't really allow them all to vote". "Negroes have been proven to be dirty and cause disease. I would say this bill to eliminate segregation has very little support in the legislature". It's so transparent. The government can longer discriminate, persecute, and control based on race. So they've resorted to doing it based on what psychoactive and medicinal substances you use.It's tempting to regard Canada as the voice of all reason and logic compared to the US, but there are fascists in their political class as well. And yellow journalists working the newspapers....... [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by puff_tuff on November 05, 2001 at 08:30:26 PT Pot and Driving Try as they might, they cannot prove that smoking pot adversely affects driving, infact it seems the opposite is true.Here is a recent article from AustraliaTuesday October 30 2001Impossible to prove pot adversely affects driving:researcherThe Melbourne Age Source: AAP It had been impossible to prove cannabis adversely affected driving, a university researcher said today. Professor Jack Maclean, director of the road accident research unit at the University of Adelaide, said while there was no doubt alcohol affected driving adversely this was not the case with marijuana. ``It has been impossible to prove marijuana affects driving adversely,'' he told the Australian Driver Fatigue Conference today. ``There is no doubt marijuana affects performance, but it may be it affects it in a favourable way by reducing risk-taking.'' Prof Maclean said a study of blood samples taken by South Australian hospitals from people injured in road accidents found marijuana was the second most common drug, after alcohol, in the bloodstream. However those with marijuana in their bloodstream were at fault in less than half of the accidents. ``Alcohol was by far the most common drug and 80 per cent of those with alcohol on board were judged to be responsible (for accidents),'' Prof Maclean said. ``The next most common drug, but much less, was marijuana and about 48 per cent of the people with marijuana were judged to have been responsible for their crash.'' He said the lack of proof that marijuana was detrimental to driving was not because of a lack of effort by researchers. ``I can say that there are some quite distinguished researchers who are going through incredible contortions to try and prove that marijuana has to be a problem,'' he said. ``Maybe it is, but the efforts they use to try to prove it are a bit astounding at times.'' Prof Maclean said some researchers also found the relative risk of crashing while driving at the speed limit in a metropolitan area actually decreased if a driver had been drinking but was under the 0.05 blood alcohol limit. ``Perhaps for some people one or two glasses of alcohol may steady them down,'' he said. However, as speed and alcohol concentration rose, the risk of accidents also increased exponentially. Prof Maclean said effective counter-measures for accidents due to driver fatigue would be to reduce the open road speed limit and to improve the safety of roadsides. ``Reducing speeds from 110 to 100 would reduce fatal and serious crashes by 29%". [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by kaptinemo on November 05, 2001 at 08:21:07 PT: 'Drug Tourism' It never fails:"Liberal Senator Tommy Banks, a member of a special Senate committee that's reviewing Canada's anti-drug legislation and policies on cannabis, said he fears an explosion in cross-border shopping trips by American hemp fanciers if Canada loosens its pot law. "You can't imagine what would be happening at border crossings. Americans would be flocking to Canada to buy pot," Banks said."Uh, excuse me, Senator, but just how well is Canada's economy doing now that the US's is in the toilet tank? Few down here are buying cars made with parts originating from the Great White North. I imagine all the other imports we take in from Up There have also been curtailed until people start feeling a little 'safer'.And I daresay that the cross-border traffic - legal and illegal - is still quite depressed after 9-11? What would you prefer? 'Hordes' (how many in a 'horde', Senator?) of Americans spending freely...or continued recession? Your choice...and keep in mind, after the nasty shock, many Americans are now contemplating growing their own. Thus removing a lot of that lovely money from your economy - possibly permanently. Have a care, Senator; at this point, the very people you look down your nose at are quite possibly the only people willing to drop their tourist dollars into your country. Piss them off by insulting them...and watch what happens in BC and Ontario, the two bellweathers of your economy.But what also rankles?"It's all very well to say pot is a harmless drug, but it has more cancer-causing agents than cigarettes."Okay, with all the over-aged hippies residing in BC, people who've smoked weed and nothing else in 30+ years, there should be a sizable proportion of them residing in morgues because of the 'carcinogenic' aspects of their cannabis usage. But there aren't any. Why? Because cannabis does not cause cancer, that's why. A fact easily available to anyone capable of reading a book. Are Canuck Senators as lacking in reading skills as many American ones evidently are? Is it a prequisite for public service Up There?My late Mother used to say that when Ignorance speaks, it often is indistinguishable from dogs barking. Someone needs to get some of these Canuck Senators some dog collars. [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by greenfox on November 05, 2001 at 07:37:27 PT Moral Hypocrisy "It's an intoxicant. There's some wild and crazy strains out there," he said. yeah, and there's 2% alcohol and there's 20% alcohol and there's 50% alcohol. SO F*CKING WHAT. "People will be taken into emergency rooms for more auto accidents. Pot comes back to you - you put the music up and you start bopping to it. You don't need that in high-speed traffic. You're going to increase the number of deaths." This sort of crap makes me sick. Thousands are killed by drunk driving EVERY YEAR, yet no one is suggesting we make THAT illegal. No, only the weed. I mean, it's not like it grows out of the ground or anything... oh wait, unlike alcohol which IS a processed chemical, weed DOES grow out of the ground naturally!sly in green, foxy in kind, -gf [ Post Comment ] Post Comment