Province Editor asks Police to do Their Job

Province Editor Gordon Clark argues that Vancouver police should enforce marijuana laws.

Drugs & the Election

TWO SEPTEMBER EVENTS

RECOVERY DAY VANCOUVER 2015 hits the bricks on Sunday, September 20, 2015.

The time is noon to 3 pm.

The location is the Queen Elizabeth Theater plaza at Georgia and Hamilton.

And it's all about celebrating recovery from addictions of all kinds. People in recovery, friends, family and the curious will all be there with music, stories, dancing and great conversation. Heck, you might even save a life or two.



A few days later, local therapist and author, Candace Plattor

 will be holding a LOVING AN ADDICT, LOVING YOURSELF workshop.

Here are the details:

Loving an Addict, Loving Yourself: Stop Feeling Powerless, Let Go of the Guesswork, and Do What REALLY Works!

Is your life in chaos because of an addicted loved one? Are you putting your own needs on the back burner in desperate attempts to help the addict in your life?

There is a way out of the cycle of chaos!

Join Candace Plattor, M.A. and Cait Saul as they present a weekend workshop on September 25-26^th for family and other loved ones affected by addiction:

Loving an Addict, Loving Yourself: Stop Feeling Powerless, Let Go of the Guesswork, and Do What REALLY Works!

Attendance is limited and Early Bird pricing is in effect until September 10^th, so be sure to sign up soon.  For more information or to register, click here:

http://candaceplattor.com/workshop-for-loved-ones/

 

Pot is Peanuts...look at Opioids and Big Pharma

While marijuana and its new storefronts gather the most headlines these days, the real addiction crisis is in prescription 'medicines,' especially opioids.

The numbers are staggering - 22 million scripts in Canada this year.

Big Pharma is a runaway evil and no one that we can see is doing a single thing to rein in the excesses of marketing, advertising and give-aways to doctors practiced by these licensed dope dealers.

Meanwhile, those of us on the front lines of recovery work continue to pick up the pieces - the young and middle-aged doctor-assisted, Pharma-seduced addicts.

Read the full tale here and weep.

Then challenge those fools running for office in the fall.

CANADA DAY HAS A NEW NAME - and purpose - IN VANCOUVER

OR

Release  June 7th. 2015 Vancouver, BC Canada Smart Approaches to Marijuana Canada  

The Pot Lobby appears to be moving ahead on July 1st. 2015 Cannabis Day Vancouver in spite of Vancouver Police telling Smart Approaches to Marijuana Canada that they would not let Cannabis Day proceed for 2015. 

Smart Approaches youth member Connor Fesenmaier (18), along with retired RCMP officer Chuck Doucette, and Pamela McColl met with Mike Serr of the VPD, directly after Cannabis Day 2014 and they were assured the event would not proceed in 2015. The Chief along with Mike Serr had drawn the line at such an event being held on a family day and the country's birthday. SAM Canada was told that the organizers of the event would be called in and told to not organize. In reviewing their website on June 7th. booth sales are brisk after opening on June 1st. 2015. 

In 2014 Cannabis Day was a farmer's market pot event, with children and adolescents exposed to the promotion of drug use, and marijuana was sampled out and sold on the grounds of the Vancouver Art Gallery. 

Vancouver 420 2015 resulted in 64 people being treated at St. Paul's hospital with symptoms of nausea, vomiting, and various states of consciousness. 

Vendors at Vancouver 420 boast sales in excess of $80,000 for the day and home delivery services were promoted. The cost of law enforcement, the health bills, all were picked up by the taxpayers of British Columbia. 

In Aurora Colorado a sixteen year old girl and her dog where shot when they ordered home delivery marijuana and thugs with guns, masquerading as home delivery, responded to the order with the intent of robbing the customers of their money. The Vancouver Police Department have confirmed involvement of organized crime in the dispensaries. Penny Ballem writes in her report for the plan to license the dispensaries that she would give demerit points to an applicant who was known to be problematic to the VPD. Why not close them outright ? 

The marijuana dispensaries, and the farmer market style event planned for July 1st should be shut down. . 

The delivery of marijuana for medical purposes should be limited to the program run by Health Canada - the MMPR. 

We have written to the Vancouver Police Department to confirm their position and intended action on this issue and await their reply. 

We have filed a complaint with the failure of the Vancouver Police Department to enforce the laws of Canada and close the 93+

dispensaries. 

Smart Approaches to Marijuana Canada 

Pamela McColl

Chuck Doucette

Connor Fesenmaier 

HELP IS ON THE WAY

 

New technology could put an end to drunken driving, officials say

By Ashley Halsey III June 4 

A technological breakthrough that could virtually eliminate the drunken driving that kills 10,000 Americans each year was announced Thursday by federal officials, who said it could begin appearing in cars in five years.

The new equipment won’t require a driver to blow into a tube, like the interlock devices some states require after drunken-driving convictions. Instead, either a passive set of breath sensors or touch-sensitive contact points on a starter button or gear shift would immediately register the level of alcohol in the bloodstream.

Drivers who registered above the legal limit wouldn’t be able to start the car.

“The message today is not ‘Can we do this?’ but ‘How soon can we do this?’ ” said Mark Rosekind, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). “It is a huge step forward.”

Eager to introduce an advance that would rival seat belts or air bags in saving lives, Rosekind said he would push to get the technology finalized, field tested and put into use before the five to eight years anticipated by researchers.

Though no cost-per-car estimate has been made, once the sensors go into general production it’s anticipated the cost will be equal to that of seat belts or air bags, about $150-$200 per vehicle.

Asked whether there would be a federal effort to mandate use of the devices in all new vehicles, Rosekind said he wasn’t sure that would be necessary.

“There’s not going to be a parent who isn’t going to want this in their child’s car,” he said. “There’s not going to be a business that’s not going to want this in their vehicles.”

NHTSA, safety advocates and automakers discussed whether the necessary technology was feasible for years. Researchers funded by auto manufacturers and federal safety regulators now have determined that it works.

[Too drunk? Your car won’t go along for the ride.]

 

They have developed passive sensors that detect how much a driver has had to drink, but are working on how best to package the sensors inside a vehicle. They have determined how to package touch-sensitive devices but still need to refine the technology to ensure accuracy.

“Touch-based could happen faster because we know how to package it,” said Rob Strassburger, head of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety and vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group for the world’s major auto companies.

The advances that lead to Thursday’s announcement at NHTSA headquarters were made at a Boston laboratory run by Bud Zaouk.

“These devices have to be quick, accurate and easy to use for the automakers to put them on their platforms,” Zaouk said. 

The goal is to produce a device that will react in less than a second and function without maintenance for at least 10 years or 157,000 miles. Sensors that detect alcohol levels in the air can react in less than a second after a driver gets into the vehicle. 

The technology is an offshoot of advances in sensory detection since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. With sudden demand for bomb detection sensors, the ability of machines to scan people, packages and luggage for tiny trace elements has expanded exponentially.

The American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade association, opposes the alcohol detection system.

“Today, NHTSA, MADD, and major auto makers presented what they claim will be a voluntary system ... a description that directly contradicts their own past statements,” the organization said in a statement.

Though Rosekind said he didn’t think it would be necessary to make the system mandatory, he did not preclude that option. MADD is unambiguous in its belief that the system belongs in all vehicles.

In 2013, 10,076 people were killed in car crashes involving drunk drivers, federal data shows. That was less than half the number of alcohol-related traffic deaths recorded in 1982, when 21,113 people were killed. In the past 30 years, 401,404 people have died in drunken-driving crashes.

Colleen Sheehey-Church, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, told an audience at NHTSA that included scores of her group’s members about the 2004 death of her son, who drowned in the back seat of a car driven into a river by a drunk driver.

“This is the future,” she said, gesturing toward a vehicle equipped with prototype detection gear, “when drunk drivers will be unable to drive their cars. If this technology was available in 2004, my son, Dustin, might be alive today.”

 

At Least SOMEONE is Fighting the Legalization & Normalization of Pot