drug war

By: Janice Tibbetts, National Post

 

OTTAWA — Prison expansion to make room for an expected inmate influx is moving ahead in Canada, with the federal government rolling out plans in recent days to spend $105-million on new cells at three prisons in Western Canada and one in Nova Scotia as part of a major building spree in the next few years.

 

The announcement of 600 new beds is the first stage of an expansive plan to build 2,700 new spots within three years to accommodate a projected 25% increase in prisoners being jailed as a result of Conservatives’ tough-on-crime legislation, which is expected to put more people in jail and keep them there longer.

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CBC News

 

Long-held fears that the use of marijuana will lead to harder drugs are overblown, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire.

 

The research, in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, found that other factors, such as whether or not a person has a job, or is facing severe stress, are far more predictive of future hard drug use than whether they smoked pot as a teenager.

 

"Employment in young adulthood can protect people by closing the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities," said co-author Karen Van Gundy.

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The StarPhoenix

 

While Canadians justifiably have been preoccupied with a system that allowed 490 Sri Lankan Tamils to end up on West Coast after each paying human smugglers tens of thousands of dollars, the truly dark side of this odious industry came to light in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

 

The bullet-riddled bodies of 72 migrants from Central and South America were found there last week, victims of human traffickers who disposed of their suddenly inconvenient human contraband as they might flush a bag of dope rather than get caught.

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By: Jonathan Power, Toronto Star

 

During the difficult years that preceded the British handover of Hong Kong to China, the Chinese government's intense antipathy to opium and the still fresh memories of the evil that 18th century buccaneering Britain had inflicted on China and Hong Kong added an extra emotional charge to what, anyway, was a most complicated transition. Without opium there would have been no Hong Kong. The British only acquired it because of the Opium Wars, and the city's early economic success was built on the opium trade.

 

It was the British who fed the Chinese propensity for opium. Historians point out that the Chinese would have found it elsewhere, even grown some of it themselves. But the truth is the Indian-grown opium was the brand the Chinese smokers savoured and the British East India Company marketed it with commercial élan.

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By Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, Vancouver Sun

 

Nearly four years after President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led crackdown against drug traffickers, the cartels are smuggling more narcotics into the United States, amassing bigger fortunes and extending their dominion at home with such savagery that swaths of Mexico are now in effect without authority.

 

The groups also are expanding their ambitions far beyond the drug trade, transforming themselves into broad criminal empires deeply involved in migrant smuggling, extortion, kidnapping and trafficking in contraband such as pirated DVDs.

 

Undeterred by the 80,000 troops and federal police officers arrayed against them, gunmen frequently take on Mexican forces in the open. Operatives of one group, the Zetas, did so in northern Mexico this spring when they blockaded army garrisons. In June a group believed to be linked to another organization, La Familia, ambushed federal police in the western state of Michoacan, killing 12 officers in early morning light.

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By Lachlan Labere - Salmon Arm Observer

 

Drug issues continue to be the biggest threat to the health and safety of the community.

 

Salmon Arm RCMP Staff Sgt. Kevin Keane emphasized this point when delivering an update to city council Monday.

 

“When you look at it from other priorities, such as youth, traffic, the increase in property crime, it seems to be at the core of everything,” said Keane.

 

Keane said the detachment has made several high-profile arrests and that is going to be the norm.

 

“Down at the shop, we’re starting to get a little mean-on these days, we’re starting to get angry about it. We just don’t tolerate anybody anymore who kind of flaunts it.” Read more »

Editorial, Orangeville Citizen

 

PERHAPS IT’S IN RESPONSE to the law-and-order agenda of the Harper Conservatives, and maybe it’s a sign of things to come. Whatever the case, a Supreme Court of Canada judgment released last Friday must be sending alarm bells ringing among Canadians concerned at protecting our civil liberties.

 

For years now, we’ve become accustomed to politics dominating the United States Supreme Court, a classic example being when that court voted 5- 4 to effectively put George W. Bush in office by barring recounts in Florida that would likely have given the swing state to Al Gore.

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By: Colby Cosh, Macleans

 

Bill C-95, the “criminal organization” amendment to the Criminal Code passed in 1997, has borne its inevitable fruit. Devised to calm the spirits of a fearful nation, the law bent civil liberties into new and fascinating shapes. It created a new offence:

 

 

Which sounds fair enough, but be sure to check out the convenience-of-the-Crown caveats in subsection (2):

 

 

To put it another way, you can conceivably be tried for “participating in or contributing to” a criminal organization even if it didn’t get around to committing any crimes, you didn’t do anything to help it actually commit crimes, you didn’t know what particular crimes it might be thinking of committing, and you couldn’t possibly pick anybody else in the group out of a lineup.

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By: Terence Corcoran, National Post

 

The Harper government, fresh from botching its alleged pander to the libertarian wing of the Conservative party with its voluntary census plan, appears to be having no problem steamrolling over the libertarian wing’s sensitivities on crime. In back-to-back performances this week, two Cabinet ministers invoked harsh tough-on-crime motives that show the Tories’ concern about individual rights to be a fleeting interest compared with their enthusiasm for escalating the bonkers American war on drugs, gambling and sex.

 

Under the guise of fighting “organized crime,” a global economic sector created largely by government laws and regulations, the Conservatives — with hardly a peep from the opposition or critics — this week expanded the Canadian division of the monstrous U.S.-led war on drugs. For a government allegedly concerned about the “intrusiveness” of a pollster extracting personal information under threat of fines and prison, the Conservatives are disturbingly unconcerned about a massive increase in police power to meddle in the lives of its citizens in the name of fighting crime.

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By JOSEPH QUESNEL, For the Winnipeg Sun

 

The federal government needs to look beyond just law enforcement as a means to combat gangs that plague Manitoba and increasingly many First Nation reserves.

 

Ottawa has announced it will be giving police and prosecutors enhanced powers to tackle activities such as prostitution, illegal gambling, and drug trafficking. The changes will expand the list of what is considered a serious crime in the Criminal Code. Keeping a common bawdy house (for hookers), keeping a gaming or betting house and exporting, importing and producing illegal drugs will all be added to the list of serious crimes.

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