Ontario Student Drug Use & Health Survey - 2011
Adolescent Health Survey - Powerpoint - slide 37 Substance Use
Alcohol and marijuana factsheet (printer friendly)
Other substances factsheet
Legal & Other Responses
Canada Vancouver drug problem - February 2010
Stop the Violence BC coalition:
Stop the Violence BC is a coalition of law enforcement officials, legal experts, medical and public health officials and academic experts concerned about the links between cannabis prohibition in BC and the growth of organized crime and related violence in the province.
Stop the Violence is an educational campaign seeking to improve community safety by broadening the public’s understanding of the link between cannabis prohibition and gang violence. Guided by the best available scientific evidence, Stop the Violence BC is calling for cannabis to be governed by a strict regulatory framework aimed at limiting use while also starving organized crime of the profits they currently reap as a result of prohibition.
Video: Vancouver Downtown Community Court
Every War On Drugs Myth Thoroughly Destroyed By A Retired Police Captain
Matthew Perry: When a Court Orders an Addict to Treatment Instead of Prison We all Rise
Hooper, D. (2013). Social Work Helper
"Matthew along with many others are advocating for government
funding to Drug Courts because they make sense, cost-effective, and measurable.
The biggest barrier for prevention programs aren’t funding, it’s for profit
prisons. As long as sending people to prison is incentivized, there is no
incentive to find solutions."
According to the All Rise National Association of Drug Court
Professionals website:
In
Drug Court, these two words have an even greater meaning. These simple words
capture the essence of what a Drug Court does. ALL RISE describes how instead
of imprisoning an addict, Drug Courts insert hope and support into the very
lives of people who the traditional justice system says are hopeless.
Whenever
one person rises out of addiction and crime, we ALL RISE. When a child is
reunited with clean and sober parents, we ALL RISE. When the intergenerational
cycle of drug addiction in a family is broken and healing begins, we ALL RISE.
Whether the charge is driving while impaired, theft, burglary or any number of
other addiction-driven offenses, we ALL RISE when a Drug Court guides the
offender past the chaos and wreckage and toward recovery.
When a court orders an addict to treatment instead of prison, we All Rise” ~ Martin Sheen
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The drug war debate must change. Canada can help
The drug war debate must change. Canada can help
Muggah, R. (2013). The Globe
and Mail.
Leaders from Mexico, Central America and countries like Bolivia and Uruguay are increasingly convinced that the war on drugs is failing. And it seems that at least one country in North America also tacitly agrees. U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Mexico and Central America presaged a remarkable shift in narrative from security to economic priorities. And an unprecedentedreport by the Organization of American States also calls attention to the shortcomings of counter-narcotics efforts across the western hemisphere.
The United States has spent more than $14-billion on military equipment and drug eradication efforts in Colombia, Mexico, and Central America over the past decade and a half. It may have spent more than atrillion dollars since the 1960s. Now the United States is publicly calling for a more “balanced” approach since, as one official explained: “there are only so many black hawks [helicopters] we can sell them.”
To be sure, the refocusing of attention on the economic drivers of organized crime, including big time drug traffickers and organized gangs, is a welcome development. After years of peddling repression, there may now be space to discuss the underlying factors that give rise to the supply and demand for drugs in the first place. It is widely known that poverty, inequality, and weak public institutions give rise to violent criminal entrepreneurs. The novel emphasis of the presidents of Mexico and Central America on education and jobs for vulnerable youth is undoubtedly good news.
But a simplistic focus on economic development will not diminish the region’s drug and gang problems. Instead, it risks depoliticizing the debate, and concealing the ways in which corrupt elites keep the drug business alive. What is really needed is a comprehensive strategy that elevates violence prevention as the goal of drug policy. This means investing not just in police and judicial institutions as Canada is currently doing, but also increasing spending on education and job placement for at-risk youth, supporting single mothers, and promoting urban renewal in hot spots.
Canada and the United States should also reconsider the metrics by which they measure success in dealing with illicit drug production, trafficking, and consumption. This means moving beyond the amount of drug crops eradicated, suspects put in jail, or the price of cocaine in Toronto or New York. Good policy should be measured in terms of its harm reduction effects, including fewer murders, overdoses, and new cases of needle-related disease, and decreased prison populations. Policies based on evidence rather than ideology are needed now more than ever.
Robert Muggah is research director of the Igarape Institute, a principal of the SecDev Group, and a professor at the Instituto de Relacoes Internacionais. This article is published in partnership with the Canadian International Council and its international-affairs hub OpenCanada.
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Did Chief Jamie Graham try to muzzle cop who supports drug legalization?
Did Chief Jamie Graham try to muzzle cop who supports drug legalization?
Lindsay, B. (2013). Vancouver Sun.
The Victoria Police Department and Chief Jamie Graham are evidently not supporters of a growing movement calling the War on Drugs a dismal failure.
If the allegations in a human rights complaint filed by Const. David Bratzer are to be believed, Graham was not impressed when the lower-ranking officer joined up withLaw Enforcement Against Prohibition and began speaking out against the prohibition of marijuana and other drugs. Bratzer claims he was discriminated against because of his political beliefs when his superiors — including Graham — allegedly tried to restrict his freedom of speech.
Bratzer, currently the coordinator of the VicPD’s bait car program, submitted his complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal earlier this year and on Friday the bulk of it was accepted for filing.
According to tribunal documents, when Bratzer first joined LEAP in 2008, he told his bosses that he would let them know when he performed any public work on behalf of LEAP, and promised he would always make clear that his views were personal and did not represent those of VicPD.
Despite those pledges, which he says he has kept, Bratzer alleges that he has been barred from participating in a panel discussion on harm reduction, ordered not to publicly comment on the Washington State marijuana legalization referendum last year and repeatedly reminded of Graham’s disapproval.
Those actions, Bratzer told the tribunal, “demonstrate repeated efforts to restrict, prevent or deter him from the responsible public expression, outside working hours, of his political belief.”
Bratzer isn’t the first police officer to publicly speak out against prohibition. Former West Vancouver police chief Kash Heed also supports marijuana legalization and LEAP boasts a wide-ranging membership that includes retired DEA special agents, former NYPD officers, a Brazilian police chief and active officers of just about every rank across the U.S.
The Canadian branch boasts former correctional officers, a retired RCMP chief superintendent, a retired B.C. Supreme Court Justice, a former federal prosecutor and former Vancouver mayor Senator Larry Campbell.
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