Canadian teen with Tourette's Syndrome permitted to use medical cannabis on campus

The teenage years are an awkward time for everybody. High school can be especially tough, just trying to fit in, particularly if you have any sort of disability. 15-year-old Noah Kirkman, a 10th-grade student at Western Canada High School knows about these pressures all too well, growing up with attention-deficit disorder and Tourette syndrome.

While he is far from the first high school student to have to deal with such issues, he appears to be one of the first students to have been granted permission by his school to use medical marijuana, while on campus, to treat his ailments. That's right, three times a day the young man walks right past the Principal's office, and into the Vice Principal's office for a quick rip, or two or three, off of his handheld herbal vaporizer. 

Before school, at lunch, and after school, Kirkman is able to gratefully pass up ineffective prescription pills in favor of inoffensive vaporized cannabis, which he says, "doesn't have any withdrawal effects and I can't (overdose) on it."

"It helps me keep calm, it helps me keep focused," he added in his interview with the Metro in Calgary.

Kirkman has been a licensed medical marijuana patient since September, and he and his mother immediately approached the local Calgary school board to try to determine how he could legally and discreetly get his head right a few times a day while on campus. Apparently, "hotboxing the Veep's office" was the best plan.

Kirkman was cool with puffing on his vaporizer out in front of the school, but cold Canadian weather and fear of controversy led school officials to invite him inside the administrator's office. He doesn't see what all the fuss is about, saying, "Usually, I'm not that discreet about it. My friends are very accepting of it, I've dealt with no discrimination or anything like that."

That is certainly no shocker, that his friends think that him seshing on kush three times a day while they stand in line for juice cups and taco snacks is cool. Marijuana use among high school aged American kids continues to rise, and the trend only goes...ahem...higher when you look at Canadian teens. Still, though, Kirkman's is the only case we could find where a teenager has been permitted to use medical marijuana on campus, in any country.

Back in the U.S., even for adult college students, aged 18 and up, on campus marijuana use - for any purpose - is strictly prohibited, more often than not. Any school that receives any federal funding is forced to respect the fact that marijuana is still a Schedule I controlled substance on the federal level, or risk losing much needed federal funding.

Signed into law in 1990, the Clery Act requires all colleges and universities that get any form of federal aid keep, and disclose to the feds, detailed records of all crimes committed on or near their campuses - including the buying and selling of crappy dorm-room dimebags.

In most cases, the best you can hope for is that your school allows you to at least carry your meds on you at all times. Unfortunately, the more common route is to completely ban any and all marijuana possession anywhere on school grounds - even for students required to spend their first year living on campus.

This ridiculous dangling of federal funds in front of cash-strapped universities like a carrot on a stick is evenhappening on college campuses across Colorado, where in the 2012 election, more people voted to legalize limited amounts of weed for adults 21 and up than voted for Barack Obama, who trounced his opponent in the state.

The bravery displayed not just by Kirkman, but by the school board who is allowing him to make such history, might end up being the template eventually used to end the widespread cannabis prohibition on campuses at all levels of education, across the globe.

With luck, stories like Kirkman's will continue to make headlines, simultaneously downplaying the fabricated threats of marijuana use, and further instilling its legitimacy as a true medicine in the mind of the general public.

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Canada's police chiefs suggest tickets, not charges, for pot possession

Canada's top cops say handing out tickets for illegal possession of small amounts of marijuana could be more efficient than laying criminal charges.

Delegates at the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police annual meeting have passed a resolution that says officers need more enforcement options to deal with people caught with pot.

Association president Jim Chu, who is chief constable of the Vancouver Police Service, said having the option of writing tickets to penalize pot users caught with less than 30 grams of the drug would reduce policing and court costs.

"There's a cost to a lot of the enforcement that we do," Chu said Tuesday at the meeting in Winnipeg.

"So we believe that what's happened is because the cost to process a charge has been so high, that many circumstances where it is appropriate to address the illegal behaviour, we haven't been able to do it."

Chu pointed out that a conviction results in a criminal record that places barriers on future travel, employment and citizenship. A ticket under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act would avoid that record.

The association said its ticketing proposal would require changing federal law, but that does not mean the chiefs support the legalization of marijuana.

Chu said some officers, when confronted with simple possession, find laying charges isn't worth the effort.

"Quite often they're turning a blind eye to it because there's the problem of going off the road to process the paperwork," he said.

Justice Minister Peter MacKay said in an email to The Canadian Press that the federal government has no intention of legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana.

"These drugs are illegal because of the harmful effects they have on users -- and on society for that matter. As a government, we have a responsibility to protect the interests of families across this country."

The association cited statistics from 2007 that show out of more than 100,000 drug offences reported by police that year in Canada, 47,101 of them were for marijuana possession.

The committee's report said there are circumstances where a formal charge for simple possession is appropriate, for example, if a driver who has been pulled over is found to be smoking a joint.

But the report said the large majority of simple possession cases could be more efficiently dealt with through tickets.

"By adding this additional policing tool, we are proposing a responsible public safety initiative that will be of overall benefit to all Canadians," said Chief Mark Mander, head of the association's drug abuse committee.

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Canada Liberal Party Leader Says Legalize Marijuana

Canada’s opposition Liberal Party head Justin Trudeau has called for the legalization of marijuana, putting himself and his party on a collision course with the ruling Conservatives ahead of 2015 elections. Trudeau’s stand also differentiates the Liberals from the New Democratic Party (NDP), which has been the progressive party on drug reform, but which only calls for decriminalization.

Canadian Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau (wikimedia.org)

The Liberals adopted marijuana legalization as a platform plank in January 2012, but Trudeau had previously lagged behind the party, calling only for decriminalization.

Trudeau revived drug policy as an issue when, at a Kelowna, British Columbia, event Sunday, he spotted someone in the crowd holding a sign calling for decriminalization.

“I’ll take that as a question,” he volunteered. “I’m actually not in favor of decriminalizing cannabis, I’m in favour of legalizing it, tax and regulate,” he said to applause. “It’s one of the only ways to keep it out of the hands of our kids, because the current war on drugs, the current model, is not working.”

In Vancouver on Thursday, Trudeau elaborated.

“Listen, marijuana is not a health food supplement, it’s not great for you,” he told reporters, but added that it was no worse for people than cigarettes or alcohol and he was now willing to go further than just decriminalization. “I have evolved in my own thinking,” Trudeau said. “I was more hesitant to even decriminalize not so much as five years ago. But I did a lot of listening, a lot of reading, and a lot of paying attention to the very serious studies that have come out and I realize that going the road of legalization is actually a responsible thing to look at and to do.”

The stand places the Liberal Party on a collision course on the road to the 2015 elections with the Conservative government, which is solidly in favour of the status quo, and the NDP, which would only go as far as decriminalizing the possession of small quantities of marijuana.

When Liberals controlled the national government at the beginning of this century, they moved to reform the marijuana laws. But the Liberals only favored a quasi-decriminalization, and they ended up not even being able to move that forward.

The Conservatives have held national power since 2006 and have ratcheted up penalties for some marijuana and other drug offenses. Responding to Trudeau’s comments this week, the party said it was staying the prohibitionist course.

“These drugs are illegal because of the harmful effect they have on users and on society, including violent crime. Our government has no interest in seeing any of these drugs legalized or made more easily available to youth,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

The Conservatives’ position on marijuana puts them out of step with most Canadians on the issue. An Angus-Reid poll last fall showed Canadian support for legalization at 57%, and other surveys have polled even higher.

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