Canada’s Cannabis Journal since 2010
Thomas Szasz’s Iconoclastic Views on Cannabis and Everything Else We Like Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) was a psychiatrist and academic known for his libertarian views: the right to freedom of choice arising from the principle of self-ownership. No government, he wrote, is going to be dedicated to freedom. It is the nature of government to […]
By Judith Stamps Back in the fall of 2013, Sensible BC led a heroic attempt to make use of British Columbia’s Recall and Initiative Act to force a referendum on decriminalizing cannabis in BC. The Act called for the signatures of 10% of the voting public in each of BC’s 85 electoral ridings. Volunteers failed […]
The new reality of penicillin, Alexander Fleming’s discovery of 1928, hit world consciousness during World War II, when it was deemed a miracle. Surgical techniques invented during the American Civil War, WW I, and WW II began in the 1950s routinely to be applied to cancers, reconstructions, and transplants. They too were deemed miracles. But […]
Phantasmagoria: 1a. Images seen with the magic lantern, 19th century precursor to moving pictures 2a. A constantly shifting, complex succession of things seen or imagined as in a dream or fever state… Spinners of future tales on cannabis history—fictional or non—will need to draw on the succession of dreams and fever states that have created […]
Exercises in Political Neutrality: The Lift Website’s Unified Field Theory of Medical Marijuana in Canada By Judith Stamps You’ve probably seen it before but if you haven’t, go and visit liftcannabis.ca, the Lift website developed in 2013, by Tyler Sookochoff, former director of marketing for a firm that produces cannabis harvesting equipment. Lift has two […]
There is loud minority out there that says: we cannot legalize cannabis because there is no research, and thus no basis for going forward. Its members include the Harper government, Health Canada, the RCMP, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, select American republicans, the DEA, the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), and a […]
Notes on the February 4th Event at the University of Victoria Last Wednesday I trotted off to UVIC’s Farquar Auditorium to listen to a ‘debate/discussion’ on legalizing marijuana, put on by the UVSS—the student society. They had organized a panel with four speakers, two pro, two con. On the pro side were activist Marc […]
Veblen-Inspired Reflections on the Recent Federal Anti-Drug Campaign If you’re not already acquainted, allow me to introduce you to Thorstein Veblen, an early 20th century economist who provided a biting analysis of upper middle class and wealthy citizens in modern nations. He called them the leisure class. They’re also the governing class. In Veblen’s view, […]
Editor’s anti-dote to the post holiday blues…political thoughts. By Judith Stamps Totally My Opinion: Conundrums To Consider For 2015. 1. This may well be the last issue of Cannabis Digest before the next Canadian federal election…if, that is, there is to be a spring election. Evidence for an early election: Conservative Senator Mike Duffy’s trial […]
In every five years of their professional lives, family physicians and specialists in Canada must complete 250 credit hours of Continuing Medical Education (CME.) To fulfill this requirement they trudge off regularly to lectures, study sessions, and educational conferences. In 2013 it became more likely that they could gain such credits in Canada by attending […]