Canada’s Cannabis Journal since 2010
By Debbie Stultz-Giffin Maritimers Unite for Medical Marijuana Society (MUMM) is outraged over the escalating trend of law enforcement in Nova Scotia to lay charges under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act against medical cannabis patients for growing and possessing their medicine. The Medical Marijuana Purposes Regulations (MMPR) implemented last spring endeavoured to cancel the […]
Decision Should Radically Change How Cannabis Is Used As Medicine In Canada ”Would you confine your points to things that really matter!” This was the last thing Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said to crown lawyer Paul Riley before Riley quickly closed his arguments. It was an appropriate ending to a special morning in the Supreme Court […]
(image: animalnewyork) By Judith Stamps Here is one of my favourite fantasies. It is some time in the future. The war on drugs is defunct, and cannabis is legal. We are in the midst of a cultural renaissance. The film industry is on fire, producing new ‘post prohibition movies’ every year. Literary fiction on cannabis […]
By Ted Smith When Owen Smith was arrested for baking cookies over 5 years ago, there was no doubt in my mind that history was being made. Since that fateful day, when he walked out of the apartment with no handcuffs and his head held high, Owen has been a modern hero. At the press […]
By Owen Smith Two years after I had been arrested and charged in the act of making cookies, lozenges, gel caps, and massage oils with cannabis infused vegetable oils, we would begin the trial that would hear the constitutional challenge that was recently before the Supreme Court of Canada. After Ted Smith testified, Gayle Quin, Gina Herman […]
By Kirk Tousaw I recently had the privilege of arguing the R v. Smith medical cannabis extract case before the Supreme Court of Canada. That case involves whether the government’s medical cannabis regime violates the Charter because it restricts patients – even those who have qualified for exemptions from the general prohibition due to medical […]
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 […]
The Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club (V-CBC) is the beating heart of the Extract Trial. With thousands of active members, the discreet downtown Victoria dispensary founded by Ted Smith has served medical cannabis patients since 1996. The club barely skipped a beat after I was arrested and has since expanded and improved upon their product line. […]
(Read Part 1: The Journey Begins) (Owen Smith is writing a series of blogs to tell the whole story of the RvSmith Exract Trial that was recently heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.) Part 2: Arrested and Charged Leading up to my arrest I had plenty of time to think about the consequences of […]
(old picture of the product selection from the now incorporated Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club) By Owen Smith Part 1: The Journey Begins I began learning about the cannabis plant when I started college in 2002—not from any of my classes, but from the small Hempology101 circle that was formed each Wednesday on the lawn in […]