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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
"The party's over" for drug users in Canada
    #7469690 - 09/30/07 09:42 AM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Harper government to unveil get-tough national drug strategy
September 29, 2007 - The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Health Minister Tony Clement will announce the Conservative government's anti-drug strategy this week with a stark warning: "the party's over" for illicit drug users.

"In the next few days, we're going to be back in the business of an anti-drug strategy," Clement told The Canadian Press.

"In that sense, the party's over."

Shortly after taking office early last year, the Conservatives decided not to go ahead with a Liberal bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana.

Since then, the number of people arrested for smoking pot has jumped dramatically in several Canadian cities, in some cases jumping by more than one third.

Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Halifax all reported increases of between 20 and 50 per cent in 2006 of arrests for possession of cannabis, compared with the previous year.

As a result thousands of people were charged with a criminal offence that, under the previous Liberal government, was on the verge of being classified as a misdemeanour.

Police forces said many young people were under the impression that the decriminalization bill had already passed and were smoking up more boldly than they've ever done before.

Clement says his government wants to clear up the uncertainty

"There's been a lot of mixed messages going out about illicit drugs," Clement said in an interview Saturday after a symposium designed to bring together Canada's arts and health communities to combat mental health issues.

There's also a health-care cost element to suggesting to young people that using illicit drugs is OK, the minister said.

"The fact of the matter is they're unhealthy," Clement said.

"They create poor health outcomes."

For too long, Clement argues, governments in Canada have been sending the wrong message about drug use. It's time, he says, to take a tougher approach to dealing with the problem.

"There hasn't been a meaningful retooling of our strategy to tackle illicit drugs in over 20 years in this country," Clement said.

"We're going to be into a different world and take tackling these issues very seriously because (of) the impact on the health and safety of our kids."

The Conservatives' wide-ranging $64 million anti-drug strategy is expected to combine treatment and prevention programs with stiffer penalties for illicit drug use, and a crackdown at the border against drug smuggling.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day will join Clement in announcing the plan as part of a range of initiatives to be unveiled by the Tories surrounding next month's throne speech.

Clement said treatment and prevention programs were his key priorities for the health element of the drug strategy.

"Yes, there's a justice issue to that," he said.

"But there's also a treatment issue, there's also a prevention issue."

Clement has suggested in the past that he opposes so-called harm reduction strategies for combating illegal drug use, including safe-injection sites where nurses provide addicts with clean needles and a safe place to use drugs.

At a Canadian Medical Association meeting last month, he was quoted saying "harm reduction, in a sense, takes many forms. To me, prevention is harm reduction. Treatment is harm reduction. Enforcement is harm reduction."

The following day, a petition signed by over 130 physicians and scientists was released, condemning the Conservative government's "potentially deadly" misrepresentation of the positive evidence for harm reduction programs.

Vancouver's Insite safe injection clinic is facing a December 31 deadline for the renewal of a federal exemption that allows it to operate.

Critics of the Conservative government's approach to illicit drug use say the federal government would be making a serious mistake by failing to renew the exemption.

"I think there's very little chance that Mr. Clement will extend the safe injection site's permit to continue," says Dr. Keith Martin, a British Columbia Liberal MP and former substance-abuse physician.

"But in doing that they will be essentially committing murder."

Advocates say safe-injection sites help to prevent the spread of serious diseases, including AIDS and Hepatitis by preventing users from sharing needles while opponents say the sites simply promote illegal drug use.

Martin says he's all for increasing penalties for people who sell illegal drugs, including gangsters, but wonders why the Tories would want to target users when he says similar strategies in other countries haven't worked.

"I can't understand why the Conservatives are embracing a war-on-drugs approach that has proven to fail," he said.

"By all means, go after the pushers. By all means, absolutely go after the organized crime gangs that are the real parasites in this situation," he added.

"But for heaven's sake, treat the user as a medical problem and adopt the solutions that have proven to work in other countries."


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InvisibleTTT
Cultivate the inside
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Registered: 08/07/06
Posts: 4,340
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: veggie]
    #7469849 - 09/30/07 10:31 AM (16 years, 4 months ago)

:thumbdown:


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Offlinenub
Plobable
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Registered: 04/14/06
Posts: 204
Loc: little district
Last seen: 11 years, 9 months
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: TTT]
    #7469916 - 09/30/07 10:53 AM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Riot..


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Offlinejohnjohnandjamal
Stranger

Registered: 04/20/05
Posts: 510
Last seen: 6 years, 11 months
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: nub]
    #7469999 - 09/30/07 11:16 AM (16 years, 4 months ago)

NOOOOOOOOO!


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Offlineflamingcap
Hashassin
Male


Registered: 07/23/07
Posts: 93
Loc: Outside, taking your shro...
Last seen: 14 years, 3 months
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: johnjohnandjamal]
    #7470186 - 09/30/07 12:02 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

not another one... :sad:


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"War doesn't determine who's right, only who's left."


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Offlinepabloescabar
Stranger thanyou
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Registered: 05/02/07
Posts: 383
Last seen: 15 years, 2 months
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: flamingcap]
    #7470314 - 09/30/07 12:36 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Fuck conservatives, when they all die off(and they will) freedom will finally have a chance


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OfflineVisionary Tools
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Registered: 06/23/07
Posts: 7,953
Last seen: 1 year, 7 months
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: flamingcap]
    #7470315 - 09/30/07 12:36 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Kill the tyrants before they kill you. Unhealthy? The only thing unhealthy about cannabis is the stress getting ahold of it because of fucking prohibition causes.


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OfflineQuake3
Total Carbohydrate
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Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 08/31/06
Posts: 924
Loc: Relatively New York
Last seen: 12 years, 8 months
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: Visionary Tools]
    #7470397 - 09/30/07 01:05 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Visionary Tools said:
Unhealthy? The only thing unhealthy about cannabis is the stress getting ahold of it because of fucking prohibition causes.




Health isn't really the issue. The truth is that for the human body, no drug/chemical is healthy. The Utopian world that these anti-drug retards want to pursue would eventually move further toward getting rid 100% of every drug and chemical including alcohol, caffeine, MSG, aspartame and so forth. Drinking too much water or being outside in the sun too long is also not healthy.

These idiots are so simple minded. You either have 100% of the nation smoking weed everyday forever or you have nobody smoking it. That's how they see it. They don't realize that by legalizing it, most people would use the drug responsibly. Most people who abuse drugs will abuse something if the drugs aren't available.

After the previous prohibition was done with, not everyone went out to get drunk on 190-proof alcohol. Most people drink alcohol and use caffeine responsibly. It's silly to think they wouldn't smoke responsibly too. We can save some lives by prohibiting alcohol/caffeine, but the pros don't outweigh the cons. I don't see why they can't apply this simple concept to Cannabis and other drugs? Why is Cannabis illegal?


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Offlinemoon_glue
Orwell's Post9/11 Era
Male


Registered: 01/20/07
Posts: 2,264
Loc: Earth, today...
Last seen: 8 years, 10 months
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: Quake3]
    #7470448 - 09/30/07 01:19 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

well canada sucks now.

isnt amsterdam going conservative too?

lets all unite with our drugs and money and build our own fucking country!


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OfflineMisanthrope
Stranger
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Registered: 10/06/05
Posts: 79
Last seen: 15 years, 2 months
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: moon_glue]
    #7470515 - 09/30/07 01:39 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Oh its all over now. No one in Canada will ever smoke cannabis again. Hopefully all those smack addicted druggies will die out now. Doing God's work that Clement. . .


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InvisibleAlion
Male


Registered: 08/14/07
Posts: 462
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: moon_glue]
    #7470521 - 09/30/07 01:41 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

lets all watch the rest of the country feel no differently then watch the 'crime rate' raise because people are smoking.


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InvisibleBridgeburner
Not spiritual at all.
Male


Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 09/16/06
Posts: 20,010
Re: "The party's over" for drug users in Canada [Re: Alion]
    #7490570 - 10/06/07 06:44 AM (16 years, 3 months ago)

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/10/04/4550232-cp.html

Conservative anti-drug plan blasted

VANCOUVER - Critics of the Conservative government's new anti-drug plan are calling it everything from naive to politically opportunistic and a threat to the civil liberties of Canadians.

A coalition of Vancouver health and social groups says prison terms and attempts to scare users straight won't solve Canada's illegal drug problem.

"You just can't incarcerate your way out of this," former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen, a member of the Beyond Prohibition Coalition, said Friday. "The United States locks down 2.3 million people every night."

Owen, an architect of Vancouver's drug safe-injection site, told a news conference the Tory government's adoption of policies similar to the failed war on drugs in the United States is "uninformed."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has been skeptical of the safe-injection site's claimed harm-reduction benefits, promised Thursday to put more drug dealers behind bars and help drug users kick their habits in the $64-million anti-drug plan.

Another coalition member, former B.C. provincial court judge Jerry Paradis, said illegal drugs have been used as a political gimmick by prime ministers for decades.


"Stephen Harper has just discovered the political usefulness of drugs finally and that all of this is posturing leading up to a federal election," said Paradis.

The issue is personal for drug addict Dean Wilson, who showed up late and dishevelled to speak to the media.

He said he's still trying to comprehend what the government is attempting to do.

"If he came down here and saw what was going on, I think he would change his mind," Wilson said, pointing out the window to Vancouver's gritty Downtown Eastside, Ground Zero of the West Coast's drug problem.

"Dead people don't detox. We've got to keep them alive long enough to make the right decision."

Harper noted during his announcement that two-thirds of the funding will go to prevention and treatment for addicts and to promotional campaigns to keep people away from drugs.

The coalition said harm reduction should be the centre of a government strategy that includes not only treatment but social housing and employment.

On the eve of Harper's announcement, the government announced another extension of the safe-injection site's special Health Canada licence to operate, which expires at the end of the year. Supporters had been worried Ottawa would not renew it.

Ann Livingston from the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users said the government needs to stop criminalizing drug users.

"Unless Canadians move forward and change our drug policy and our drugs laws, I think that we're going to be feeling like we're trying to move a mountain with a teaspoon," she said

Paradis, a provincial judge for 28 years, agreed crime and drugs can be related but prohibition and not the drugs themselves are at the root of the crime.

"I've never had a case of a kid who smoked too much marijuana taking a pickaxe to somebody else's head at a party," he said referring to what's believed to have been an alcohol-fuelled fight at a Calgary house party where a 17-year-old man was killed last weekend.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association opposes the new approach for mandatory minimum sentences for serious drug crimes, calling it a "significant threat to civil liberties."

In a news release, the association said the same approach in the United States resulted in unjust prison sentences while it failed to reduce the supply or demand for drugs.

"If this government believes that a drug strategy primarily relying on enforcement will work, then it should be willing to prove that to taxpayers," said association spokesman Kirk Tousaw.

"We call on the auditor general to conduct a comprehensive review of the economic and social costs of drug prohibition in Canada."

Owen said believes he already knows the results.

"My message to Mr Harper and the Conservative government is we win - you lose, we're right - you're wrong and it's just a matter of time that they'll have to reverse their position or somebody else will be running the country."

The head of the Canadian Professional Police Association endorsed the government's plan, calling it a strong message to drug dealers.


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