BC Bud Goes Global

I watched a BBC TV report on this subject today which was quite entertaining. Especially humorous was the lovely anchor trying to look serious and purposeful while introducing the clip! Unfortunately, the link was unavailable, but here is part of the story:
Canada's spreading cannabis crop
Page last updated at 12:02 GMT, Tuesday, 22 July 2008 13:02 UKAs we walk into John's basement, the smell is so overwhelming it almost knocks me off my feet.
In front of me stand 120 marijuana plants whose thick bushy leaves cover the strong stems.
John explains quite nonchalantly that this is just a small growing operation, or grow-ops as they are known throughout Canada.
[...] Inspector Brian Cantera of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Vancouver believes that John's small grow-op is one of 20,000 to be found in residential houses around the province.
That figure excludes the larger grow-ops in industrial locations, not to mention the huge dope farms that are scattered around British Columbia's vast interior.
If Inspector Cantera's estimates are accurate, then British Columbia is probably home to the largest concentration of organised criminal syndicates in the world.
The striking aspect of BC's marijuana trade is that it has gone beyond the boundaries of traditional organised crime groups (although some are still heavily involved) and entered into the middle classes [astonishing! you can’t possibly mean it!].
Much of the revenue derived from BC Bud, as the cannabis crop is known, goes on paying college fees, perhaps buying a second car or making that holiday to the Caribbean just a little bit more affordable.
The trade is so large that the police in BC are faced with an impossible task.
[...] Billy Weselowski and his wife Kim have devoted themselves to helping vulnerable women caught up in drug and alcohol addiction to restart their lives.
Billy rails against those Canadians who are demanding the legalisation of marijuana.
"I've dealt with at least 20,000 addicts, and easily 10,000 will tell you they've relapsed on marijuana¿That's the underbelly of what marijuana (is) about - what it's doing to people. And it's like alcohol - it runs an industry."
But the marijuana growers have equally passionate supporters like Michelle Rainey who has the legal right to cultivate a limited amount of marijuana for medicinal purposes.
She says it is the only thing that helps relieve the pain inflicted by the debilitating Crohn's disease from which she suffers.
But she is sought by the US to face charges of conspiracy and money-laundering because of a legal Vancouver-based marijuana seed business with which she was previously involved.
Over the past decade, Canada has been moving slowly towards a more benign regime of toleration towards marijuana (although the current minority federal government of Stephen Harper vehemently opposes this development).
This has placed the trade in the middle of some intense arguments between Canada (and BC in particular) on the one hand and the US and its guardian on drugs orthodoxy, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, on the other.
If BC's marijuana trade ever did force through a change in the legal status of the drug in Canada, the implications for Canadian-US relations would be profound. This will be a crime story well worth watching.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7519178.stm

Waiting to Inhale is highly recommended to further your understanding of the seriousness of medical marijuana. It is available from Ironweed.org. Ironweed's monthly dvd selectioni usualy has more than one film on the same topic, and included on this DVD are two other films on the medical [dis]establishment, Health, Money and Fear and Collateral Damage: Bad Medicine in Tennessee: http://www.ironweedfilms.com/

War Resister Is Deported

Robin Long deported from Canada
Courage to Resist. July 15, 2008
Today Army PFC Robin Long became the first U.S. war resister since the Vietnam War forced to leave Canada and turned over to the U.S. military. While dozens of supporters gathered this morning at Peace Arch Park on the Canadian-U.S. border, Robin was already being transported to Fort Carson, Colorado. He is expected to be immediately placed in pre-trial confinement and eventually court martialed for AWOL, desertion, and possibly other violations of military discipline.
Courage to Resist has made civilian legal representation available to Robin and will be doing everything possible to provide him our full support. We plan to collaborate with many other groups in our efforts to help Robin in the coming weeks. Refusing to fight in an illegal war is not a crime—except under the Uniform Code of Military (In)Justice.
At 19, the Boise, Idaho native joined the Army on the promise that he would not be deployed to Iraq. “I made it apparent that I didn't want to go to Iraq. I didn't believe in the war that was going on over there so that's why I was stationed at Fort Knox.” However, later Robin realized that “they didn't have any new people enlisting so they were just taking anyone they could.”
In April 2005 Robin was ordered to Fort Carson in preparation for deployment to Iraq. Robin recounted, “My superiors were telling me; ‘You're going to the desert to fight rag heads’. It wasn't like I was going to Iraq to liberate the people.” After his Army “battle buddy” didn’t report for deployment by leaving for Canada, Robin also went AWOL and eventually hitchhiked to Canada. Once there he spent several months doing more hitchhiking and hanging out at soup kitchens before settling down with the help of the War Resisters Support Campaign.
Along with a few other U.S. Iraq War resisters, Robin had been most recently living in Nelson, British Columbia, a town of 10,000 people 30 miles north of the intersection of Washington state and Idaho. Local police have gained a reputation of being hostile to war resisters. “We have enough hippies of our own” seems to sum up their attitude. Authorities claimed that because Robin was staying with different friends around Nelson, he was in violation of a previous order to notify authorities of his whereabouts—and this gave them the opening for an expedited removal. Robin’s bad luck continued when a conservative Canadian Judge ruled against his last ditch appeal.
“This is a gift from Stephen Harper to George Bush,” says Gerry Condon of Project Safe Haven, referring to the conservative heads of state of Canada and the U.S. “And it will trumpet that Canada is no longer a safe haven for AWOL GIs.” However, Gerry believe that “this is not the first of many deportations. It may be the first and the last. A minority government that ignores the will of its people and its Parliament will not be allowed to rule much longer.” Federal elections are expected to take place in Canada this fall.
Check couragetoresist.org for updates on Robin’s case http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/608/1/