Sensible BC
Hey Chris, I hope you're having a great long weekend.
"Legalization Day" is coming soon, but we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to fair cannabis laws!
In Quebec and Manitoba, they're banning home growing of your four legal plants. Quebec is even
banning the sale of t-shirts with a pot leaf on them!
Cities are also suddenly
putting in stricter rules for tobacco smoke, or are
banning it entirely, just so they don't look like hypocrites as they pass laws to ban cannabis use in any public place.
In BC, harsh new cannabis laws include a potential
$5000 fine and 3 months in jail if anyone can see your 4 legal cannabis plants from the street. The same steep fine and jail sentence applies to minor things like smoking a joint in a canoe, or possession of a joint you bought at a dispensary instead of a government licensed shop.
I'll be on Victoria on October 17,
leading a protest on the Legislature groundsagainst these awful cannabis laws passed by the BC NDP.
MY DISPENSARY IS STAYING OPEN
Yesterday was the ten year anniversary of our opening day at the
Vancouver Dispensary Society. I look forward to another ten years of providing medicinal cannabis to Canadians in need from our two storefronts and nationwide by mail order.
It seems like many dispensaries plan on closing on October 17, either out of fear or because they want to apply for a legal permit.
My dispensaries will not be closing down to apply for a permit. We will continue to serve our members and communities as we have been for the past decade.
Considering that in the short term there's going to be
only one legal shop in BC,
no shops in Ontario until the spring, and only a scattering of shops across the rest of the country, it seems to me that our services will still be needed for quite a long time to come.
Instead of closing down, we plan on expanding our services and broadening our focus! It's too soon to spill the beans yet, but I am very excited about our plans to push things forward. You can expect to hear some exciting updates from me in early November. Stay tuned!
Sensible BC will also be changing our focus. While we will continue to fight for fair cannabis laws, I want to broaden the debate to talk about the whole war on drug users. With the deadly fentanyl crisis killing so many people, it's time to recognize that the problem isn't drugs, the problem is that prohibition makes drugs more dangerous and more deadly.
We need a new approach which abandons the dug war and treats drug use like a health issue instead of a criminal one. You'll be hearing more from me on this topic over the coming year.
That's it for now. I hope you had a wonderful Dankgiving weekend!
Dana Larsen, Sensible BC Director
PS:
Please click here to sign a petition for Muhammed Lukman, a Malaysian man
who has been sentenced to death for running a cannabis compassion club. Over 68,000 people have signed this petition so far!
The Malaysian government is now considering
changing the law to allow medical cannabis, so please give Lukman a little support, he needs our help!
