All Posts Tagged With: "marijuana"

What students are talking about today (February 7th)

From "How to Phallus your Ballot" mlrbMUSIC/YouTube

1. About 1,000 people spoiled their ballots in the recent Carleton University Students’ Association elections, chief electoral officer Sunny Cohen told The Charlatan. Most of the ballots were disqualified because people wrote in more than one place, but more than 100 had penises drawn on them. A “Phallus Your Ballot” Facebook page and instructional video had proposed this act of protest. “If we’re going to elect dicks, we might as well get to draw them,” read the page. Third-year student Sam Corey told The Charlatan he voted for two candidates but drew a phallus on the rest of his ballots because CUSA is too concerned with issues like “safe space.”

2. A fraternity at Duke University threw an Asian-themed party on Friday. The Asian Student Association fought back on Wednesday with a protest after seeing photos of party goers in Japanese kimonos and dressed as sumo-wrestlers. The ASA released the photos but was kind enough to blur faces. Although kimonos and sumo costumes aren’t offensive on their own, The Duke Chronicle reports the party was advertised in an e-mail that started off “Herro Nice Duke Peopre,” a dig at some Asian accents. The frat has apologized.

Continue reading Phalluses on ballots at Carleton, a racist party & Capoeira

Millions could be generated by taxing marijuana

Yeshe/Flickr

It’s a bounty that almost does grow on trees.

A new study has rung in British Columbians’ pot purchases at about half a billion dollars each year, leading its pro-legalization researchers to argue current laws mean the province is missing an opportunity to harvest tax revenues.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University have quantified the retail value of black market marijuana sold only to British Columbians for the first time, pegging its value at between $443 million and $564 million annually.

“What’s important is to get a sense of how many people are using marijuana in B.C., and how much they’re using, and how much that’s worth,” said Dan Werb, the study’s lead author and co-founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. “That data drives policy.”

Continue reading B.C.’s annual spending on pot: as much as $564-million

Obama’s odds, no-money-down tuition, Halo 4 & a drug bust

The student pick is Obama (feelsgoodlost/Flickr)

1. It’s election day in America and things are looking good for President Barack Obama. Statistician Nate Silver, one of the most trusted seers of election results in America, Tweeted Monday that the latest polling suggests a very close election, but that Obama has a 91 per cent chance of winning the electoral college, which would give him another four years in office.

2. If it were up to student newspaper editors, Obama would win. The Daily Campus at Southern Methodist University is the only high-profile student paper to give Romney its endorsement.

3. More details are out from Ontario Liberal leadership candidate Glen Murray on his no-money-down post-secondary plan. Here it is. In partnership with private lenders, university students would be allowed to borrow up to $7,000 per year, roughly the cost of tuition and fees. Repayment and interest would start after graduation based on income. Loans would be interest free in the first 12 months after grad. The Canadian Federation of Students is opposed, naturally, saying it would “saddle youth with a lifetime of debt.”

Continue reading What students are talking about today (November 6th edition)

Seminar at UBC will train medical marijuana entrepreneurs

A seminar taking place on the University of British Columbia campus this weekend will train wannabe medical marijuana entrepreneurs. Greenline Academy, the organizer, told The Province that its $330 seminar is sold out. The course will cover everything from the legalities of medical marijuana to growing techniques. The classes have already been taken by more than 1,300 people in cities from Winnipeg to Victoria since Greenline opened in 2011. A permanent school is planned for Kelowna, B.C. Health Canada has issued more than 12,000 licenses to grow medical marijuana.

Research shows links to mental illness, lung capacity

Photo by Yeshe on Flickr

When sociologist and drug-policy expert Andy Hathaway surveyed one of his first-year classes at the University of Guelph last fall, 80 per cent of students reported experience with cannabis.

Hathaway cautions that it was only a small pilot study (around 100 responses), and it took place at Guelph, which is, let’s face it, “a bit granola.”

Still, that 80 per cent figure isn’t surprising.

When twelfth graders are asked if they’ve tried marijuana, roughly half say yes.

Provincial rates of lifetime usage now range from a low of 40 per cent of Albertan twelfth-graders to a high of 63 per cent of those in Nova Scotia, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. And that’s before university.

Continue reading Students aren’t getting the facts about marijuana

Startling findings in annual drug use report

Photo by eduard_orbitron on Flickr

The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse has released their annual report, which brings together surveys of drug use among teens from the various provinces. What’s most startling is the risky behaviours Grade 12 students are engaging in before driving. Depending on the province:

—up to 20 per cent report driving within an hour of having two or more drinks
—up to 38 per cent report being a passenger with a driver who was drinking
—up to 20 per cent report being a passenger with a driver who had “too much to drink”
—up to 21 per cent report driving within an hour of using cannabis

Clearly young people need to plan safer rides home.

There were also interesting, if less shocking, findings about teen drug and alcohol use in general. The study looked at students in grades seven, nine, 10 and 12 and found that the amount of teens who had drank alcohol at least once in their lifetimes ranged from 52 per cent of Albertan teens to 70 per cent of Newfoundland teens. Those figures climb as high as 90 per cent by twelfth grade.

Continue reading Teens doing dangerous things in cars

Is our education system producing citizens who can’t make a tough call?

A recent poll suggests that on the issues of capital punishment and decriminalizing marijuana, Canadians are split. On capital punishment, 40 percent would like to see it come back. 46 per cent oppose the reintroduction.

Fair enough: it’s a tough issue, and though I myself oppose capital punishment, I can see how a reasonable person might favour it. What bothers me about the poll, though, is that 14 percent neither support nor oppose reintroducing the death penalty. On an issue of such importance, an issue that has been debated so thoroughly, why are there so many — more than one in ten — who can’t make up their minds?

My hope is that for most of them, the issue is so thorny, they just cannot find a way through it, struggle as they might. My fear, though, is that most of  them haven’t thought much about it at all, or, worse, imagine that on difficult issues there is no point trying to come down on one side or the other. Indeed, I worry that many of them think it is foolish to try.

I worry about it because I frequently see the same quality of mind in my first-year students. They confuse critical thinking with pure open-mindedness. That is, they want to be open to all points of view (which is good), but they think it close-minded and intolerant to finally accept one and reject others. As such, it is difficult to teach them to write a persuasive essay, since they not only resist convincing someone else of their position, they resist taking a position in the first place.

On the issue of decriminalizing marijuana–not a life and death issue– the undecideds are even greater. Fully 20 percent of Canadians can’t or won’t take a stand on the issue. Why not? If democracy is to have any value, it must be premised on a population capable of reviewing the facts, weighing the arguments, and deciding which position is better. What is the point of a jury of one’s peers if one’s peers can’t take a reasonable position on your guilt or innocence? It is worth pointing out here that for both questions, the numbers of undecideds have increased compared to ten years ago.

Creating a population capable of thinking well is, it seems to me, the main justification for a public education system. If these polls — and my first-year students — are any indication, that system may be failing us.