Does anyone out there actually BELIEVE that whatever BC does in regards to its privacy laws is going to make ONE IOTA of difference to Americans if they are searching under YOUR bed for terrorists? We say we'll fine them 1 million dollars if they violate British Columbia law. Does the BC Government think we the people are ignorant? Dumb? Uninformed? Easily manipulated? The sad answer is YES.
We are farming out - against the wishes of the people who happen to also be voters - our private information to American companies, one of which is located in Bermuda to avoid US taxation! But these are American companies, who are subject to American laws, NOT BC laws, if the paranoid Americans want to check out every single person's private information, does anyone believe that we would KNOW when and if they do? Does anyone believe that an American company would come running to the BC Government and tell on Tom Ridge? The Department of Homeland Security will simply TELL those American companies that they want to see any and every file and threaten them with secrecy under the Patriot Act or else!
Having our goverment MLAs and spin doctors trying to appease the people of the province with idiotic rhetoric is slapping our intelligence in the face. YOUR private information is going out of province with the continual policy of the BC Liberal Government to lessen the worth of British Columbians. Don't stand for it!
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Da Kine Cafe and drug addiction today.
It seems to me that the Vancouver Police are unable to identify drug dealers. Their recent raid on Da Kine Cafe was orchestrated like an invasion on Bin Laden's hideout! AFTER the media had already alerted them. The streets were blocked off, black suited men scurried around, flashing lights, yellow tape, cops on radios. All those resources to handcuff a few girls. One needs to think a little about the retailing of pot: Is it a bad thing? If left to its own developement, you would eventually have recourse to what you're getting the same as a can of beans from the supermarket. They'd be able to track it back to source. It would be become quality controlled.
Think about the street dealers: You never know what you're getting. It is widely assumed that these organized criminals are sprinkling stronger stuff in with the pot. Highly addictive ingredients, the kind of things that result in young women ending up as hopeless prostitutes and young men wasted in the prime of life.
If the police need help in finding the real criminal dealers on our streets, I suggest we could point them out to them. I'm sure you know where some are right now, I do. You can't shop at Army and Navy on Hastings without passing a row of illegal aliens who have been SENT here to deal drugs. Richards and Pender has the required pair on each corner. The Lotus Hotel at Carroll St. has 4 standing outside to discourage it's legal business trade. Granville has them right in front of the Community Policing Office! The West End is getting more than their share. One would almost think the action against the Da Kine Cafe was in response to the criminal street dealers complaining about unfair competition. This kind of overblown event needs some slow and rational thinking about the state of affairs in our city. While researching a play I have written about drug addiction in the fifties, I find that all over North America, it has been the police who have discouraged any logical or creative thinking about how to deal with this scourge in society. I would suggest that again, they have overreacted.
(This article published in the Westender Newspaper)
http://dakine.t35.com/
http://www.marijuana-info.org/
Oct 6, 2004 - Da Kine Cafe closed today permanently. Carol Gwilt remains in custody for selling marijuana. It is said the street drug dealers selling marijuana, rock cocaine, crystal meth and heroin were very happy.
Vancouver
Oct 30, 2004 - Carol Gwilt has since been released.
Think about the street dealers: You never know what you're getting. It is widely assumed that these organized criminals are sprinkling stronger stuff in with the pot. Highly addictive ingredients, the kind of things that result in young women ending up as hopeless prostitutes and young men wasted in the prime of life.
If the police need help in finding the real criminal dealers on our streets, I suggest we could point them out to them. I'm sure you know where some are right now, I do. You can't shop at Army and Navy on Hastings without passing a row of illegal aliens who have been SENT here to deal drugs. Richards and Pender has the required pair on each corner. The Lotus Hotel at Carroll St. has 4 standing outside to discourage it's legal business trade. Granville has them right in front of the Community Policing Office! The West End is getting more than their share. One would almost think the action against the Da Kine Cafe was in response to the criminal street dealers complaining about unfair competition. This kind of overblown event needs some slow and rational thinking about the state of affairs in our city. While researching a play I have written about drug addiction in the fifties, I find that all over North America, it has been the police who have discouraged any logical or creative thinking about how to deal with this scourge in society. I would suggest that again, they have overreacted.
(This article published in the Westender Newspaper)
http://dakine.t35.com/
http://www.marijuana-info.org/
Oct 6, 2004 - Da Kine Cafe closed today permanently. Carol Gwilt remains in custody for selling marijuana. It is said the street drug dealers selling marijuana, rock cocaine, crystal meth and heroin were very happy.
Vancouver
Oct 30, 2004 - Carol Gwilt has since been released.
in the past ....
SOME INFO ABOUT THE 1950S DRUG SCENE. Does it matter today?
(researched because I have written a stage play about drug addiction in the 50s)
In 1952, a Special Committee on Narcotics of the Community Chest and Council of Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, recommended after thorough study: "The Federal [Canadian] Government should be urged to modify the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act to permit the provinces to establish narcotic clinics where registered narcotic users could receive their minimum required dosages of drug." - Such dispensing clinics, the committee predicted, would "protect the life of the addict and support him as a useful member of society." It would also "within a reasonable time eliminate the illegal drug trade. . . . The operation of such clinics would not entail any reduction in the vigilance of law enforcement agencies," which would continue to be responsible for keeping narcotics out of reach of non-addicts.
An addict who shifts from black-market heroin to morphine by prescription moves into another world. Suppose, for example, that be has been paying $20 a day for 40 milligrams of heroin mixed with 360 milligrams of hazardous adulterants and contaminants. Armed with a prescription, he can walk into almost any neighborhood pharmacy and secure pure morphine, U.S.P., safely diluted in an appropriate vehicle, and sterilely packaged, at the full retail price of $5 per dram or less. He thus pays about five cents for 40 milligrams of morphine. If heroin were stocked in pharmacies, he could buy 40 milligrams of it, too, on prescription, for about a nickel - as British addicts do.
The question is obvious: Why shouldn't the addict be encouraged to secure his opiates legally, on prescription, in pure form, for a nickel a day, rather than be forced by federal and state laws to spend $20 per day in the heroin black market?
(NOTE* These figures are pre 1960s, it's more like $300. per day now. And the addicts get it by breaking into YOUR car, your house or your life)
In 1954, a California citizens' advisory committee to the Attorney General on crime prevention proposed that an addict certified as incurable by a disposition board should legally receive specified doses of narcotics and thereby remove said addict as a potential market for criminally or illegally secured narcotics.
Also in 1954, Dr. Edward E. Eggston, for the New York state delegation, brought to the annual convention of the American Medical Association a proposal that the AMA go on record as favoring "the establishment of narcotics clinics under the aegis of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics." The resolution did not pass.
In 1955, the Medical Society of Richmond County (Staten Island), New York, recommended the "establishment of narcotic clinics in large centers where the problem is acute." It suggested, "Suitable private physicians can care for the occasional addict in isolated areas .... The addict will receive his narcotics only at the clinic, hospital, or doctor's office so that he cannot resell them elsewhere."
Also in 1955, the New York Academy of Medicine proposed "taking the profit out of the illicit trade by furnishing drugs to addicts at low cost under federal control."
The academy recommended that "clinics be attached to general hospitals, whether federal, municipal, or voluntary, dispensing narcotics to addicts, open 24 hours daily, 7 days a week."
In 1956 the Council on Mental Health of the American Medical Association, while opposing the immediate establishment of substantial numbers of drug-dispensing clinics as urged the previous year by the New York Academy of Medicine, did suggest "the possibility of devising a limited experiment which would test directly the hypothesis that clinics would eliminate the illicit traffic and reduce addiction."
Also in 1956, the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association established a joint Committee on Narcotic Drugs, which recommended in its 1958 Interim Report:
(1) An Outpatient Experimental Clinic for the Treatment of Drug Addicts Although it is clear ... that the so-called clinic approach to drug addiction is the subject of much controversy, the joint Committee feels that the possibilities of trying some such outpatient facility, on a controlled experimental basis, should be explored, since it can make an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of how to deal with drug addicts in a community, rather than on an institutional basis. It has been suggested that the District of Columbia, being an exclusively federal jurisdiction and immediately accessible to both law enforcement and public health agencies, might be an advantageous locus for this experiment.
Have we progressed at all in the so-called War on Drugs?
(researched because I have written a stage play about drug addiction in the 50s)
In 1952, a Special Committee on Narcotics of the Community Chest and Council of Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, recommended after thorough study: "The Federal [Canadian] Government should be urged to modify the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act to permit the provinces to establish narcotic clinics where registered narcotic users could receive their minimum required dosages of drug." - Such dispensing clinics, the committee predicted, would "protect the life of the addict and support him as a useful member of society." It would also "within a reasonable time eliminate the illegal drug trade. . . . The operation of such clinics would not entail any reduction in the vigilance of law enforcement agencies," which would continue to be responsible for keeping narcotics out of reach of non-addicts.
An addict who shifts from black-market heroin to morphine by prescription moves into another world. Suppose, for example, that be has been paying $20 a day for 40 milligrams of heroin mixed with 360 milligrams of hazardous adulterants and contaminants. Armed with a prescription, he can walk into almost any neighborhood pharmacy and secure pure morphine, U.S.P., safely diluted in an appropriate vehicle, and sterilely packaged, at the full retail price of $5 per dram or less. He thus pays about five cents for 40 milligrams of morphine. If heroin were stocked in pharmacies, he could buy 40 milligrams of it, too, on prescription, for about a nickel - as British addicts do.
The question is obvious: Why shouldn't the addict be encouraged to secure his opiates legally, on prescription, in pure form, for a nickel a day, rather than be forced by federal and state laws to spend $20 per day in the heroin black market?
(NOTE* These figures are pre 1960s, it's more like $300. per day now. And the addicts get it by breaking into YOUR car, your house or your life)
In 1954, a California citizens' advisory committee to the Attorney General on crime prevention proposed that an addict certified as incurable by a disposition board should legally receive specified doses of narcotics and thereby remove said addict as a potential market for criminally or illegally secured narcotics.
Also in 1954, Dr. Edward E. Eggston, for the New York state delegation, brought to the annual convention of the American Medical Association a proposal that the AMA go on record as favoring "the establishment of narcotics clinics under the aegis of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics." The resolution did not pass.
In 1955, the Medical Society of Richmond County (Staten Island), New York, recommended the "establishment of narcotic clinics in large centers where the problem is acute." It suggested, "Suitable private physicians can care for the occasional addict in isolated areas .... The addict will receive his narcotics only at the clinic, hospital, or doctor's office so that he cannot resell them elsewhere."
Also in 1955, the New York Academy of Medicine proposed "taking the profit out of the illicit trade by furnishing drugs to addicts at low cost under federal control."
The academy recommended that "clinics be attached to general hospitals, whether federal, municipal, or voluntary, dispensing narcotics to addicts, open 24 hours daily, 7 days a week."
In 1956 the Council on Mental Health of the American Medical Association, while opposing the immediate establishment of substantial numbers of drug-dispensing clinics as urged the previous year by the New York Academy of Medicine, did suggest "the possibility of devising a limited experiment which would test directly the hypothesis that clinics would eliminate the illicit traffic and reduce addiction."
Also in 1956, the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association established a joint Committee on Narcotic Drugs, which recommended in its 1958 Interim Report:
(1) An Outpatient Experimental Clinic for the Treatment of Drug Addicts Although it is clear ... that the so-called clinic approach to drug addiction is the subject of much controversy, the joint Committee feels that the possibilities of trying some such outpatient facility, on a controlled experimental basis, should be explored, since it can make an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of how to deal with drug addicts in a community, rather than on an institutional basis. It has been suggested that the District of Columbia, being an exclusively federal jurisdiction and immediately accessible to both law enforcement and public health agencies, might be an advantageous locus for this experiment.
Have we progressed at all in the so-called War on Drugs?
BC Government selling what they don't own!
It seems to me, that the present Liberal BC Government has no right to sell what belongs to the people of BC. The PGE was taken over by W.A.C. Bennett for the benefit of people and business in our B.C. Interior and became B.C. Rail. Even though it did make money, that was not the concept or a prerequisit. B.C. Rail became a proud possession of British Columbians. NO government has the right to dispose of our assets! B.C. Hydro is in the same catagory, also apropriated as B.C. Electric by Bennett. It is a power source which is the envy of all North America and should remain for the benefit and use of British Columbians. B.C. Ferries as well. British Columbia's ferry system was once proud of having more ships than the Canadian Navy! The present government is going to send over 500 million dollars OUT of BC for new ferries. And the TRUE reason Premier Campbell is doing it now is because he is stuck into pretending that BC workers cannot build ferries after bad mouthing the fast ferries to death. $500 million dollars COULD be going to British Columbians and their families and peripheral businesses that families use. That kind of money is an investment in the vibrancy, work ethic and expertise of the resident people. Campbell is still pretending that the NDP were the bad guys when he is the one being referred to as Darth Campbell.
The assets of British Columbians should remain as their possessions, they are part of B.C. and our ability to control our own destiny, selling everything off only places us in a subservient position to outside interests whose reasons are profitability with no regard for us as people.
Anyone can sell out, it takes resolve, creative thinking and a faith and vision in our future to hold on to what we've got and build for our future generations!
The assets of British Columbians should remain as their possessions, they are part of B.C. and our ability to control our own destiny, selling everything off only places us in a subservient position to outside interests whose reasons are profitability with no regard for us as people.
Anyone can sell out, it takes resolve, creative thinking and a faith and vision in our future to hold on to what we've got and build for our future generations!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)