Agreed

By attempting to choose which parts of nature are to be illegal the state reveals it illegitimacy to govern, and simply reveals once again its Judeo-Christian based value of “we have to be saved from ourselves” bias.

The entire prohibition ideology is nothing more than a complete failure of experimental social engineering.

Anyone who chooses to use a drug of any sort is using it now, the state and its laws notwithstanding.

It is long past the time when anyone I know of cared one iota about what the states’ opinion of drug consumption is.

However, I do agree with the premise of the article in which any commercial operation should be checked for proper permits, correct handling/ storage of chemicals related to growing, and for proper construction according to building codes.

It is true that wiring not up to code requirements, and improper use and storage of chemicals present a danger to the immediate neighbourhood.

medical cannabis

I have severe spinal stenosis, when I have an neurological attack I have the same symptoms as someone with Primary Progressive MS. I try to keep most of my therapy to alternative medicine, my stomach can only handle pain killers for a day or two. Because of where some of the stenosis is in my spine my shoulders can freeze from 1 to 4 times a year, right now I have a pinched nerve in my spine since the end of June of this year... so pretty much I am in pain every day. I manage it with Medical Cannabis, acupuncture and and British trained Osteopath. my grower is wonderful and very responsible, she also does not use GMO Seed and uses no pesticides. I believe there is only ONE inspector for western Canada and that person is in Saskatchewan and the federal government has not given this person the budget to get out of his own province, how much sense does that make....

Yes, i have heard that some growers do grow more than they should, so yes they should be penalized. But the bigger problem is the illegal growups and all the other wonderful drugs they make, bring in and sell. Personally I think Cannabis should be legalized and I am not saying give it to young people, but for people who are ill and in pain, it is a great non-addictive pain killer and has many other benefits. regulate it like alcohol and tax it heavily. here is one website http://phoenixtears.ca/ ....

I am very aware that Health Canada wants to quit growing medical cannabis(theirs is pretty awful and expensive, would never use it) and have one or two firms grow for them. I would never use this cannabis, because I would never now if it had pesticides used on it, or if they start to use GMO Seed. I will buy on the street if Health Canada cancels my growers license. I am also very aware that Health Canada would rather have us on pharmaceuticals that damage our organs rather on cannabis that has very few side effects, because they want more control over us and also get kick backs from the Pharmaceutical companies....

cheers

jane

sooke, BC

Fire guys

Shouldn't be involved in law enforcement, very bad American idea

Or politics, unless it's to get some new equipment

Cops shouldn't routinely put out fires.

I'm sure some grow opps have fires and ventilation problems.

I'm just as sure it's very few, because that would be poor management.There has to be 20 books that will tell you do it properly

If this UBCM resolution was passed the municipalities would use the information to eliminate grow opps, not regulate them

Orchids or Pot

Ive been watching the series "Prohibition" on pbs one of the best docs Ive seen. Too many similarities with this issue of pot.

A few years ago, I tried to grown Orchids. Ive also grown tomatoes, herbs, beans and other veg to see what was possible, indoors. It can be a safe thing to do and the power requirements and design of space are the same. A sterile environment is also important, so you need plastic sheeting, big fans for ventilation, pumps, timers, ph meters etc....
The bigbox stores sell pretty much all the gear needed to turn your house into a forest.
They even sell the 1000 watt HPS bulbs.

I really like to cook, especially with fresh ingredients, imagine a home designed with an indoor grow adjacent to the kitchen and fresh veg with dinner every night.
What concerned me was the heat and protection needed for grow lights. For safe indoor use you should have a series of lower wattage lights 200 to 400 watts in an enclosure with fans cooling and redirecting the heat.

People weld in their garages, build labs and tesla coils, do wood working, laquor furniture while they smoke cigarettes. Are we going to regulate everyone in town who has a hobby or small business? People do dangerous things.

Existing laws apply

Municipalities already have zoning and licensing that regulates businesses within their boundaries. A legal grow-op would have to operate in an area where zoning allows that sort of business. A business licence would be required. Any electrical work done would require a licensed contractor and a permit and inspections from the city or the BC Safety Authority (Surrey uses BCSA).

If these things are being ignored, is it only by licensed grow-ops or is there a wider problem with enforcement of existing laws and regulations that apply to businesses? I hope that municipalities are asking how they can ensure that businesses of all kinds are being conducted properly. Faulty wiring or improper pesticide handling are just as hazardous in a restaurant or farm as in a medicinal grow-op.

Surrey never enforces its by

Surrey never enforces its by laws unless it is for the Gestapo to come and do a home inspection even to people who outright own their own homes....That is the bigger issue of this to me. Same problems happen in Mission and Coquitlam as well.

Marijuana should be out right re legalised as far as I am concerned. It is far less dangerous than legal prescription drugs or that alcohol that is probably the worse legal drug in the country by far.

to scubajane

Pot helps people in so many ways. It heightens appetite, provides pain relief, useful for psychiatric issues and more. The byproducts of hemp have numerous applications.

The laws are uneven, unfair and crazy. Laws that create hypocrisy. Most Canadians know it should be legalized. There are health risks, but its difficult studying something thats illegal and such a hot political potato.

I disagree with taxing weed the same way as alchohol or tobacco. Those sinful pleasures are over taxed already....

Bad Smells

Surrey's Fire Chief has legitimate concerns about illegal wiring and fire hazards, but his position was weakened by making specious arguments that go beyond those concerns and smack of alarmism.

Legal pot growers have modest operations that don't require illegally hacking into the power grid. Most households already have hydro service that can handle their power needs and if they need a new circuit, they can call an electrician. The Fire Chief may not intend to confuse illegal and legal operations but he has done so nonetheless.

Something was indeed smelly when he raised the spectre of chemical contamination from fertilizers and pesticides that might be used in legal grow-ops when tons of such chemicals are dumped on lawns and gardens in most urban areas at a rate tens or hundreds of times higher than on farms. He might note that medical marijuana users, and therefore their suppliers, are quite particular about the purity of their medicine. Virtually all medical pot is 100% organic. Once again he confused legal with illegal operations.

No thinking city council would deny sick people their medicine and don't want to lump them in with criminals. As noted, illegal grow-ops exist because prohibition makes them lucrative. The Fire Chief would have done better to warn them of prohibition, not sick people.

And another thing

The only pest I've ever heard about in grow ops are spider mites which I believe are handled by ladybugs,not pesticides.

A good overview of pest management in grow ops was aired in an episode of Trailer Park Boys, forget which one...

Honesty

Banning marijuana is just another Harper-sop to the Americans and their failed & ridiculous 'war on drugs'.
Give me one direct anecdotal success story on 'alternative' therapies versus one hundred 'scientific' studies paid for by Big Pharma, like the latest 'kill' job on vitamin E and prostate cancer.

Mr. Harper Cares..........

Shows just how intersted The Harper Government is in the welfare of Canucks....

I believe there is only ONE

I believe there is only ONE inspector for western Canada and that person is in Saskatchewan and the federal government has not given this person the budget to get out of his own province, how much sense does that make....

It makes perfect sense to the neocon. Defund everything remotely liberal and then point and say, Failure!!!

Use existing laws - no need for new ones

As long as grow-ops remain a magnet for violent ripoffs, the city should be involved as it's responsible for policing and public safety. The city's already responsible for zoning and business operation within its property limits so all it needs to check out an existing grow-op is a bylaw officer, a supervisor, and a publicly-elected councillor, all with some stones to stand up to the organized thuggery that the pot-smoking libertarian horde has become.

We don't know enough about the benefits or dangers of marijuana yet to call it a "safe" drug, and we certainly can't compare it to alcohol, which has no known medicinal value. Attempts to do so have fallen into absurdist error and bring humiliation on their espousers, so it's disappointing to read so many useless comments of this nature here, where I would expect a more considered opinion.

When a useful hand-held detector is developed for cannabis users, and the right to detect at any time - whether while at work, or in public where harm might come to another through intoxication such as while driving - is entrenched in law, then I'll support decriminalization and licenced production by regulated private manufacturers.

Til then, my opinion remains that the vast majority of cannabis-users are not in medical need of marijuana, but merely want to exercise their individuality by flying by my house in car or on bike, getting gooned on their way to work, or blowing it all out on the way home, littering butts, candy wrappers and shouted conversations into cellphones through the neighbourhood.

Anybody still hoping for generalized acceptance of unregulated pot-smoking has to realize they've a hard row to hoe, what with the childish actions of the large number of ordinary abusers.

P. rex

"Anyone who chooses to use a drug of any sort is using it now, the state and its laws notwithstanding.

It is long past the time when anyone I know of cared one iota about what the states’ opinion of drug consumption is."

That may be; however, I'm certainly most in favour of my own opinion of drug consumption. Just like salvationist evangelical Christianity, drugs like alcohol and pot are best consumed in the privacy of one's own home, and only when the narcotic effects have substantially worn off, should the (ab)user be permitted to rejoin and contribute to society.

One should not be flying a jetliner, multitasking while walking across a busy intersection, or governing the country while in any kind of ecstasy - and that goes for alcohol-induced, narcotic-induced or Cross-induced.

Now, we have culturally accommodated to some form of public alcohol use, although it's a bit fuzzy around the boundaries. In the interest of civic harmony, I suggest we give this a bit of a bye until we come up with a properly-thought-through ethic of drug use and abuse that takes into account civic responsibilities as well as civic freedoms. I'm a little bit tired of hearing the words "I gotta right....!" especially by people who can't even identify a single one of the fundamental rights we do have.

Just a thought on rights, zalm

I'm a little bit tired of hearing the words "I gotta right....!" especially by people who can't even identify a single one of the fundamental rights we do have.

I don't believe we have any 'fundamental rights' granted in Canada. The 'rights' mentioned don't give a person anything they do not naturally possess but, rasther, the 'rights' impose limits or restrictions on one's conduct. At the end of the day, one's only 'right' is to obey the state.

Like many things in the political realm, 'rights' are marketed to the citizen as one thing but do quite another. I think the word 'right' could be loosely called a political auto-antonym. That is, a word that has two meanings, one the opposite of the other.

Other such words I can call up without too much consideration include 'democracy', 'majority', 'representative', 'freedom fighters', 'socialism', 'just war', or even legislated Acts like 'workers compensation insurance'.

Cheers.

Oh, I might add, criminalizing nature, a plant, is still patently absurd. And it will not be considered analogous to alcohol, imo, until I can wander the woods and find a bottle of Jack Daniels sprouting forth. :) Of course, state regulation short of the patently absurd (i.e., criminalization) is another issue.

rights? what rights?

There are two rights people have;

One is the right to life; the other is the right to pay your taxes in full.

The rest of the “imagined rights” are nothing more than extraneous nonsense invented by people for their own psychological comfort…..

Zalm;

“Til then, my opinion remains that the vast majority of cannabis-users are not in medical need of marijuana, but merely want to exercise their individuality by flying by my house in car or on bike, getting gooned on their way to work, or blowing it all out on the way home, littering butts, candy wrappers and shouted conversations into cellphones through the neighbourhood.”

I had no idea it was only the drug induced who littered, consumed candy, and shouted into their electronic devices…..If we removed all of this over-generalized stereotype from our society there would not be many left around…..

Zalm again;

“Anybody still hoping for generalized acceptance of unregulated pot-smoking has to realize they've a hard row to hoe, what with the childish actions of the large number of ordinary abusers.”

Ah, I believe this train left the station a long time back; generalized acceptance of unregulated marijuana smoking happened shortly after the Le Dain Commission in 1972…….in the last decade alone, certain sections of the law regarding marijuana have been struck down seven times……

Zalm,

During the mid 80’s I was a part owner in a night club in Victoria. After five years I was done; you have no idea what the general public consumes in public; if you did you would be simply astonished….and then they all drive home.

My point is this; anyone who chooses to use a drug of any type, does use that drug. Oh sure, they politely listen to the states guidance and nod obediently; then they go back to doing whatever they were doing in the first place. Nobody really cares what the state thinks regarding drug consumption.
Why should they? When you have the head of this province premier caught driving pissed out of his gourd and then let off, what example does this set for the rest of society?

Anyways if medical marijuana growers want to be licensed they will have to comply with all of the hoops the license issuer makes them jump through. It is the same for any commercial business; there are regulations; municipal, provincial, or federal.

regarding spider mites and bad smells

Spider mites are difficult to control in any indoor setting, wether you are growing pot, orchids, tomatoes, beans or herbs.
Ive heard of people introducing ladybugs but they tend to fly away. Some people introduce other predatory mites. Neem oil, Safers soap all good products work to some extent.
Healthy, well tended plants stand a better chance against mites.

It should be of concern to municipal politicians, fire chiefs and staff that any chemicals, detergents or fertilizers that go down storm drains in Surrey will end up either in the Serpentine or Nikelmakel river. Both have Salmon stocks and hatcheries. Its been a problem for a long while.