MarijuanaNews.com : Canada’s National Post Parrots UN Prohibitionist Propaganda In Two Shameful Articles

Posted February 28, 2000
(MarijuanaNews note: This really is shameful. Why would a major
Canadian paper parrot the party line. The National Post can do much better.)
See

href=”http://marijuananews.com/marijuananews/cowan/major_canadian_papers_carry_op.htm”>Major
Canadian Papers Carry Op-eds And Editorial Against Marijuana Prohibition.
– 3 Excellent Examples.
and

href=”http://marijuananews.com/marijuananews/cowan/un_narcs_complain_that_canadian_.htm”>UN
Narcs Complain That Canadian Web Sites And B.C. Marijuana
Are Contributing To The “Cannabis Problem” – Interesting Article In The
National Post
and
Run For
Your Lives! “US Says Drugs, Terror Pouring In From Canada”!
Or, The Problems Of Living Next To A Superpower Run By Narcs.

February 23, 2000
From The National Post
letters@nationalpost.com
http://www.nationalpost.com/
http://forums.canada.com/~canada
By Steven Edwards, National Post

UN BLASTS CANADA FOR HYPOCRISY ON DRUG TRADE
See

size=”2″ color=”#0000FF”>London Times Reports On UN Narks Complaints About Cannabis Sales
On the Internet. International Push For Censoring The Net.
face=”arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>

(UNITED NATIONS) — Frustrated by its inability to convince Canada to comply
with international drug-control agreements, the United Nations today exposed the federal
government for its negligence and hypocrisy in the worldwide fight against illegal
narcotics.

Canada has become a haven for illicit drug manufacturers and traffickers, thanks to
Ottawa’s failure to fully implement the agreements, a UN report shows.

Ottawa still has not implemented “basic provisions” of an important narcotics
control treaty that became Canadian law 13 years ago, nor has it honoured commitments made
at the UN General Assembly’s 1998 special session on the world drug problem, the report
says.

“We have spent more than a decade meeting with the Canadian health authorities,
foreign affairs people, and representatives at the Canadian embassy in Austria to discuss
these matters,” said Herbert Schaepe, secretary of the UN’s International Narcotics
Control Board, the Vienna-based agency that compiled the report.

“We have written dozens of confidential letters, asked numerous questions and tried
to work with Canada through silent diplomacy. We have been told that the only way to deal
with Canada is to go public. That is what we are doing.”

The report also shows that Canadian sites on the Internet have
become the world’s leading one-stop shopping centre for cultivators of “very
potent” varieties of cannabis — beating out even the Netherlands, a notoriously
drug-tolerant country.
See

href=”http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=111″>New Toronto Police Endorses Death Penalty For
Marijuana Dealers. Lies About Dutch.

(MarijuanaNews note: Is Holland really “a notoriously drug-tolerant
country?” Or is the National Post just parroting prohibitionist propaganda? Compare
Dutch drug use rates with other countries:

The Dutch national average for any (lifetime) cannabis use is 15.6 percent, a figure at
the same level or lower as that found in France, 16.0%, in 1995, or the UK, 22.0%, in 1996
and far lower than that of the US, 32.9%, in 1997.

Last month use of cannabis (marijuana) by high school seniors:
18.1% in the Netherlands (1996); 23.7% in the U.S. (1997).

Any lifetime use (prevalence) of cannabis by older teens (1994):
30% in the Netherlands; 38% in the U.S.

Recent (last month) use of cannabis by 15 year olds (in 1995):
15% in the Netherlands; 16% in the U.S.; 24% in the U.K.

Any lifetime use of cannabis by 15 year olds (in 1995):
29% in the Netherlands; 34% in the U.S.; 41% in the U.K.

Heroin addicts as a percentage of population (in 1995):
160 per 100,000 in the Netherlands; 430 per 100,000 in the U.S.

And there were 2.4 drug-related deaths per million inhabitants in the Netherlands
in 1995. In France this figure was 9.5, in Germany 20, in Sweden 23.5 and in Spain 27.1.
According to the 1995 report of the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug
Addiction in Lisbon, the Dutch figures are the lowest in Europe.

Canada should learn from the Dutch, not lie about them.)
See
Final
Report Of Dutch National Drug Use Survey Will Require New Lies From The Drug Czar:
Their Lifetime Cannabis Use Half of DEAland’s; Two-Thirds That of UK
and

color=”#0000ff”>Very Accurate Description of Dutch Cannabis Policies
On Front Page Of Canada’s National Newspaper! Important
and links

In addition, production of the drug in Canada for
domestic consumption and export to the United States poses “major problems.”
(MarijuanaNews note: Canada supplies only a small percentage
of the DEAland marijuana market. The DEA now says that half of the market is supplied by
domestic cultivation. Seizures at the Mexican border are roughly one hundred times the
seizures at the Canadian border.)
See

href=”http://marijuananews.com/marijuananews/cowan/rcmp_report_on_marijuana_traffic.htm”>RCMP
Report On Marijuana Trafficking Contradicts The Party Line
About Marijuana Smuggling From Canada To DEAland. Far More Goes North Than South

Finally, the report blasts Canada for failing to
conduct a comprehensive cross-country survey of drug abuse since 1994, leaving drug
enforcement agencies and social workers in the dark about the extent of the problem.

“With Canada, things are not working as they should,” Mr. Schaepe said.

“How can we tell South American countries that they must make a greater effort to
control drugs if a rich country like Canada is not even implementing the most basic
provisions of its treaty obligations?”

In preparation for the 1998 General Assembly session, Andy Scott, then Canada’s
solicitor-general, promised: “Canada will promote an active and balanced approach to
international anti-drug co-operation.”

That same year, Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister, told the Summit of the Americas:
“We want to work in very close collaboration to make sure that the production and the
consumption of drugs will go down in all parts of the Americas.”

At that summit, Canada even committed itself to hosting a major conference on drug issues
and boasted about being elected to chair the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission.

“Canada appears to be very active on many fronts, but unfortunately this does not
correspond to real action,” Mr. Schaepe said.

His agency reports annually on developments in the world’s illicit drug trade, revealing
which countries are co-operating with international controls and which are not. Criticism
is usually reserved for countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are major producers
of illicit drugs.

But the lambasting of Canada comes as no surprise to drug
enforcement officers both in Canada and the United States, which the report identifies as
the recipient of large amounts of Canadian-grown cannabis — North America’s
“favourite drug of abuse.”
(MarijuanaNews note: No, alcohol and tobacco are North America’s “favourite
drugs of abuse.” Of course, “drug of abuse” sounds scientific, but it is a
meaningless term useful only in identifying prohibitionist propaganda.)
COLOR=”#ff0000″>

“Law enforcement co-operation between the two countries
is excellent, but we would like to see parliamentarians tighten up some of Canada’s
laws,” said one special agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). “We
have a very porous border.”

The report says U.S.-bound Canadian cannabis is hydroponically grown at indoor sites
located mainly in Western Canada and Quebec.

A 1998 DEA intelligence brief identifies home-grown Canadian varieties of the drug as
“BC Bud” and “Quebec Gold,” and says exports of both to the United
States are “burgeoning.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Customs says the amount of marijuana seized at the
British Columbia-Washington border jumped from 10 pounds in 1994 to 2,613 pounds in 1998.

“The federal government is not showing the necessary
leadership to help us get rid of drugs,” said RCMP Staff Sergeant Chuck Doucette,
chief of the Mounties’ drug awareness program in British Columbia.

“We need a drug czar who will make statements that reflect what
we are saying at the street level, currently without any support from above.”
(MarijuanaNews note: Perhaps they can start interviewing pathological liars to find
the one who is best qualified.)
See

href=”http://marijuananews.com/marijuananews/cowan/drug_czars_testimony_on_.htm”>The Drug
Czar’s Testimony On “The Drug Legalization Movement In America” Has Three
Parts:
Lie About The Anti-Prohibitionist Movement; Lie About Marijuana; Lie About The
Netherlands.
With A Little Lying About Me
and

href=”http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=74″>As It Becomes Clear That He Has No Political
Future, The UK Drugs Tsar Rediscovers His Conscience.
The treaty Canada has neglected to fully implement is the 1971
Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

Ratified by Parliament in 1987, the convention calls for all international trade in
tranquilizers, hallucinogens such as sleeping and slimming pills, and drugs that treat
anorexia to be reported to the UN’s narcotics control board.

“From Canada there is just a big, black hole,” Mr. Schaepe said. “We don’t
know what is going into the country, nor coming out. We cannot monitor the international
movement of these substances, which is our mandate.

“The lack of controls in Canada means that they could be destined for fake companies
that will divert them into the hands of traffickers. Traffickers in third countries could
be getting them through Canada.”

The report says the “board notes with disappointment the slow progress made in
Canada” in controlling these drugs.

“Normally, Canada has a very good reputation for fulfilling its international
obligations, but here it is just breaking the treaty — a treaty that it ratified a long
time ago,” Mr. Schaepe said. “It is very disturbing.”

The report also charges that Canada is not “participating effectively” in
international efforts to control trade in “precursors” — chemicals and other
substances used in the production of drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

“There are some controls, but they are not in line with the General Assembly’s action
plan on precursor control which we note Canada fully supported in 1998 [at the special
session],” Mr. Schaepe said.

Internet sites selling cannabis seeds and equipment for cannabis cultivation are
“located primarily on servers in Canada,” says the report.

“These are not seeds for bird feed,” explains Mr. Schaepe.
“And they have no medical use; the advertising says they will produce cannabis with
high THC [tetrahydrocannabinol] content” — a reference to the drug’s potency.
(MarijuanaNews note: The UN tells us that it has no medical use. How have they
determined this?)
The sites promote indoor cultivation of cannabis, 60% of which is
smuggled south of the border, according to the U.S. State Department.

“There is an urgent need for action required to counter the spread of such
cultivation,” says the report.

Seed vendors use Canada as a base “for a reason,” Mr. Schaepe said. “We are
not excluding lax drug enforcement laws as that reason.”

Possession of cannabis is illegal in Canada without a medical dispensation permit from the
health minister. But jail terms for producers and traffickers are light compared with
punishments meted out in the United States.
(MarijuanaNews note: Almost all prison sentences are shorter in Canada than in
DEAland, which generally has some of the longest prison sentences in the world and has
more prisoners per capita than any other country – with the possible exception of
Russia.)
See

href=”http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=95″>Woman Born With No Arms Or Legs, Sent To
Arizona Prison On Marijuana Charge. Is She The 2 Millionth DEAland Prisoner?
and

href=”http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=96″>Libertarian Party Press Release Gives Data On
Prison Population As It Passes 2 Million.
COLOR=”#008000″ face=”arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>
and

href=”http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=110″>From Vancouver To Miami Indoor Marijuana
Cultivation Produces Prohibitionist Propaganda, But A Clear Sense That Marijuana
Prohibition Is A Disaster. 2 Articles

“If I were a drug trafficker,
I would rather be caught in Canada than the U.S.,” said Sergeant Gilles Michaud, a
Montreal-based RCMP drug enforcement spokesman. “That’s why they are here.”
(MarijuanaNews note: Or perhaps they are there because they are Canadian.)

February 23, 2000
From The National Post
letters@nationalpost.com
http://www.nationalpost.com/
http://forums.canada.com/~canada
By Steven Edwards, National Post

POLICE SAY THEY ARE POWERLESS TO HALT SEED SALES ON WEB Canadian
Sites Flourish: Investigations Too Complicated, Costly, Authorities Say

(UNITED NATIONS) - Vendors of cannabis seeds through Canadian Internet sites are so
confident of being beyond the reach of the law they use their home pages to mock the
authorities.

“Let me help you overgrow the government,” says the Web site of Vancouver-based
Marc Emery Direct Marijuana Seeds, in business since 1994.
See
http://www.emeryseeds.com/
and
http://cannabisculture.com/

H.D. Seeds, which has been “serving Canadians since 1997,”
shows a picture of the Houses of Parliament on its home page. The site likes to keep the
accounting books in order, however. It warns that 7% will be added to each purchase to
cover Canada’s goods and services tax.

Other sites glorify convicted drug traffickers. Stinky’s Marihuana Seed Bank, for example,
has named one its seed packages in honour of Howard Marks, described as “one of the
biggest marijuana smugglers of our time.”

The package is called Mr. Nice, the title Mr. Marks chose for his 1996 autobiography,
which he wrote after spending seven years in a U.S. penitentiary.

Canadian-based Internet servers now host the world’s largest number
of Web sites selling cannabis seeds and the equipment required to grow the drug
hydroponically, says the International Narcotics Control Board, a UN agency, in its 1999
annual report released today.

Police say they are powerless –for the moment — to knock the vendors off-line because
Internet investigations are too complicated and costly to justify when compared with the
relatively light sentences meted out by the courts.

But the UN report warns that “indoor cultivation of very potent
cannabis varieties is being promoted through” sales from the sites, especially in
Western Canada and Quebec.

What’s more, much of the growing is conducted by organized crime groups, which are selling
the drug in Canada and smuggling it into the United States.
See

href=”http://marijuananews.com/marijuananews/cowan/organized_crime_in_the_marijuana.htm”>Organized
Crime In The Marijuana Trade.
Why More “Law Enforcement” is Counterproductive.
An Excellent Halifax Editorial Says, “Marijuana laws encourage crime.”

“We know it is a problem and we are working on a strategy to combat it,” said
Corporal Mike Dunbar, an RCMP drug enforcement officer based in Vancouver.

“Just saying that a vendor supplied someone with 10 seeds won’t
get a lot in court. We have to show the entire extent of the business,” he said.

“But traditional investigative techniques can’t be applied to the Internet. Sites can
disappear overnight. Links can go on forever. Hosts may be in any country in the
world.”

Investigators need to double as cyberspace experts. But assembling teams of such experts
is costly, and the results limited, when measured in terms of years in jail for convicted
traffickers.

“Sentences are no deterrent and this frustrates us and the
Americans,” said Cpl. Dunbar. “It has been brought up at the political
level.”

In Quebec, cannabis growers are earning the “nice price” of $3,000 (all figures
US) a pound for their crop, explained Sergeant Gilles Michaud, a Montreal-based drug
enforcement spokesman.

“Its THC [tetrahydrocannabinol] level is so high that it is no
longer a soft drug.”
(MarijuanaNews note: The party line.)
See

href=”http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=116″>UN Nark Prohibitionist Propaganda
Organization Issues Annual Report; Uses Potent Pot Line To Justify More Marijuana
Prohibition
and
Canadian
Magazine Takes Skeptical Look At Claims About Potent BC Marijuana

Local motorcycle gangs, Hells Angels and Rock Machine –which have contacts
with the Bandidos of Texas — dominate trafficking in cannabis in Quebec, said Sgt.
Michaud.
See
In
Quebec Marijuana Is Growing in The Cornfields – Not the Hemp Fields.
And This Is A Challenge For Both Farmers and Good Journalism.

A search of the Internet reveals thousands of sites
selling cannabis seeds and growing equipment. They are too numerous to count, but an
inordinate number appear to be in Canada.

The Internet address www.cannabis.com/seedselect
instantly produces a list of 15 “primary sites” — seven based in Canada,
six in the Netherlands and two in Britain.

Payment is usually by cash or money order, though certified cheques are sometimes
accepted. Prices range from about $100 to $300 for seed packages that will yield between
100 and 150 grams of marijuana.

All sites visited by the National Post carried a disclaimer saying purchasers should check
their local laws to see if they can legally buy the seeds.