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By Todd Coyne, Vancouver Sun

 

The majority of British Columbians support Insite, North America's first legal drug injection site, and oppose the federal government's attempts to close it.

 

That's according to a nationwide poll by Angus Reid released Wednesday showing that 68 per cent of respondents in B.C. support Insite and its services for drug users in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, while 30 per cent oppose Insite and two per cent were undecided.

 

B.C. was the only province in which Insite had majority support, while opinion in most other provinces was largely split or on the fence.

 

By: Jason Youmans, Monday Mag

 

An Esquimalt woman says a local social housing organization is trying to evict her from her home of two-and-a-half years for using cannabis to treat her chronic conditions.

 

Christina Goluch, who suffers from debilitating arthritis and lupus and has Health Canada permission to possess and use medical cannabis, says she is the target of a campaign by the site manager of the Greater Victoria Housing Society’s Lions Lodge to rid the building of marijuana smokers, many of whom, says Goluch, are elderly and disabled and consume the drug to treat a variety of maladies.

 

“I’ve never gotten any real legal advice and so don’t really know where I stand,” says the 58-year-old. “I’m just sort of bobbing in the ocean alone, and really, everyone’s looking on to see what’s going to happen, because it will be a major victory for the medical marijuana community if I get the right to stay.”

 

By: Dustin Walker, Nanaimo Daily News

 

Health authorities should go beyond providing clean crack pipes to addicts and establish "crack-inhalation facilities" to help tackle a growing problem with the drug, says a health sciences researcher.

 

Simon Fraser University's Benedikt Fischer and his team examined the health and social characteristics of 148 primary crack cocaine users in Nanaimo, Campbell River and Prince George. The study, which will be published in Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, concludes that more targeted prevention and treatment programs are needed in smaller communities.

 

By: André Picard, Globe and Mail

 

Important: The C-Word

 

Scientists have long complained that science takes a back seat at the International AIDS Conference, but it came back with a vengeance in Vienna. Drugs to treat HIV/AIDS are getting much better: Researchers are getting closer to a pill-a-day that has few side effects and lessens the risk of resistance. Several sessions were devoted to the notion that HIV can be eliminated from the body or suppressed permanently – meaning a cure. Until recently, no one dared utter the C-word.

 

Overlooked: The other C-word

 

By Walter Cordery, The Daily News

 

Forget the collapse of the housing market in the United States -- and recent statistics show it remains in the tank -- which means B.C.'s moribund forest industry will remain on life support, voters in California this fall could spell the death knell for a thriving B.C. industry.

 

It looks as though some Californians have taken legendary Reggae singer Peter Tosh's song 'Legalize It' literally and are running with it. If passed in November, a state-wide voter initiative would legalize the cultivation, possession and sale of marijuana.

 

Legalizing marijuana has broad support in the state, with some 56% of Californians surveyed in an April, 2009 Field Poll saying they favoured making it legal for social use and taxing the sales proceeds. In October, Gallup found 44% of all Americans favoured legalization.

 

By: Staff Writer, Winnipeg Free Press

 

THE town of Pitt Meadows in British Columbia's Fraser Valley sounds like a lovely place to live. The Fraser Valley is famously beautiful. Pitt Meadows is a quiet and friendly town, so pleasant a place to live that a recent Ipsos Reid poll found that an astonishing 98 per cent of its 17,410 residents (2008) are happy with their way of life.

 

Other Canadians might wonder: "What way of life?" Most of us would need a lobotomy to live in this city that regulates the lives of its citizens in minute detail. The Globe and Mail describes Pitt Meadows as "the ban-happy capital of Canada" and, in fact, the town does nostalgically recall, at least in spirit, T.H. White's famous order of the anthill in The Once and Future King: "All that is not forbidden is compulsory."

 

Contentment comes at a cost. "We don't like big coffee cups on top of Tim Hortons," says the mayor. "No pit bulls, either." But large advertising icons and particular breeds of dogs are not the only things that the mayor and his council deny the happy inhabitants of Pitt Meadows.

 

By Dustin Walker, Daily News

 

Gabriola RCMP want the public to help them crack down on drug activity on the Island, but one officer says that some people in the tight-knit community might be reluctant to turn in their neighbours.

 

RCMP have busted a number of marijuana-growing operations on Gabriola this year. Most recently, police dismantled two grow-ops at two separate homes on July 8. About 200 plants were seized from a home on Gallagher Way and five firearms and a crossbow were also found inside, police say. They arrested a man and a woman.

 

Editorial: The Daily News

 

Growing marijuana remains a crime in Canada.

 

Under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act it is listed as one of the substances that it is illegal to cultivate.

 

In B.C., enforcing that particular part of the CDSA has become a herculean task. Never mind Gabriola Island, where the RCMP are asking for help from the public in busting those dealing in drugs of all types; all over B.C. the reality is that growing marijuana is for the most part easy and highly lucrative.

 

By: Nicole Bodner, Weekend Post

 

It’s hard to describe what it feels like when you’re told you have cancer and probably won’t make it. I’ve heard some people with cancer say they were flooded with feelings of disbelief and fear. But for me it felt more like I’d been ejected from an airplane, one that was carrying everyone I knew, including my nine-day-old baby. At the time, being diagnosed with bone cancer of the maxilla (think Terry Fox with cancer of the face instead of leg) seemed like the worst thing that could ever have happened to me or my family. It meant I’d need extensive surgery on my face and chemotherapy (if I survived surgery, that is). It meant I’d have to spend lots of time in the hospital instead of in the yard with my baby and other children (I have four altogether, including two step-daughters). I’d lose my ability to breastfeed. I’d lose my hair. And I’d have to walk around with a question mark over my head for the rest of my life. Is today “my time?” Tomorrow? Next month? Next year?

 

But today, 17 months after surgery and 11 months since my last of six rounds of butt-kicking chemo, I look back and see that getting cancer has definitely had its perks. Here’s how:

 

By William Perry, Times Colonist

 

Statistics Canada may have identified Abbotsford as Canada's murder capital, however the entire province must share this honour because provincial anti-crime initiatives have failed.

 

There are more illegal drugs and weapons on the streets, more gangs and fewer convictions. All the money thrown at special efforts such as anti-gang units have little to show for the millions of dollars spent each year.

 

Maybe it is time for a different approach.

 

The key policy question concerns the best approach to combat crime.