toronto

By Vit Wagner, Toronto Star

A Toronto man prohibited from growing marijuana for medical purposes will seek to overturn a city bylaw prohibiting grow-ops.

William Palmer, 48, who suffers from HIV and has a licence to possess medical marijuana, was charged in 2008 when the marijuana plants he was growing in his Toronto Community Housing unit were deemed a fire hazard.

The charges were dropped in provincial court Monday by the Crown on the grounds that “it is not in the interest of justice to pursue this matter.” But Palmer and his lawyer, Paul Lewin, said they will appeal to Superior Court next spring to have the city bylaw struck down as a contravention of the Charter of Rights. Read more »

By Meagan Fitzpatrick, CBC News

The NDP will choose its new leader at a convention in Toronto on March 24, the party announced Friday after a meeting to determine the rules for the leadership race.

"The leadership rules will provide for a vigourous and dynamic debate of ideas," party treasurer Rebecca Blaikie said after the meeting at an Ottawa hotel.

The rules were determined by the NDP's federal council, which is made up of close to 100 party members. Those interested in going for the job left vacant by Jack Layton's death last month will take the rules into consideration when making their decision. Layton, a Toronto MP and former councillor in the city, died Aug. 22 of cancer.

Candidates can begin now to declare their intentions to run for the leadership, but registration for the contest begins Sept. 15. Read more »

By: Jorge Antonio Vallejos, Xtra News

After almost 26 years as the only community service for youth engaged in the sex trade, Street Outreach Services (SOS) closed it doors on Aug 31.

“We were the first to do outreach, we were the first to engage with LGBTQ youth, we were the first to deal with issues of street-based sex trade,” says Robbyn Zwaigenbaum, a former SOS case manager who is now without a job.

“I’m speaking as an individual, not on behalf of the organization,” Zwaigenbaum says.

Working exclusively with youth, ages 16 to 24, who were at risk or fully engaged in the sex trade, SOS offered outreach six nights a week, in-house counselling, HIV and harm-reduction education, job skills training, and assistance with schooling, housing and different types of out-of-office appointments. Read more »

By: The Canadian Press, Reposted Winnipeg Free Press

TORONTO - A new study suggests children from homes where their parents produced drugs were largely found to be healthy themselves.

The Toronto-based research from the Motherisk Program at the Hospital for Sick Children questions the frequent seizure of children from those homes, as it found the kids to be medically fit with the majority showing no symptoms of exposure to illicit drugs.

Dr. Gideon Koren says the research shows that not all in-home drug operations can be considered the same and the decision to remove a child must be made on a case-by-case basis. Read more »

By: Andrea Houston, Xtra News Toronto

Politics took centre stage in this year's Toronto's Pride parade July 3 with hundreds of marchers demanding gay-straight alliances (GSA) in Catholic schools and rights for trans people at the provincial and federal level.

More than a million are estimated to have attended the 31st annual parade, the largest in Canada, and the largest parade in Pride Toronto's (PT) history.

Noticeably absent from the contingents of marchers was Toronto mayor Rob Ford, Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak and Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Unlike at Saturday's Dyke March, there was no sign of councillor Giorgio Mammoliti videotaping participants. Read more »

BY KEVIN CONNOR, TORONTO SUN

TORONTO - Ivy Lovell’s gourmet cookies and brownies are guaranteed to give you a buzz.

She was one of dozens of vendors at a medical marijuana show at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre called Treating Yourself Expo that opened Friday and runs all weekend.

“They are medicated and effect people differently,” Lovall of Buzzworthy’s Bakery said.

A peanut butter cookie costs $6 and a ginger brownie costs $12.

“I would advise people to only eat half of the ginger brownie at a time,” Lovell said.

“I haven’t had one yet today because I don’t want to screw up making change for people but I will have one at the end of the day,” she said. Read more »

By Jeremiah Vandermeer, Cannabis Culture

CANNABIS CULTURE - Downtown Toronto was flooded on May 7 with tens of thousands of pot-smoking protestors during the 2011 Global Marijuana March and Toronto Freedom Festival, which combined is one of the largest annual gatherings of marijuana users in the world.

The city's double-dose of cannabis celebrations starts at Queen's Park North with the Toronto Freedom Festival, where an estimated 30,000 - 50,000 people gathered this year to repeat calls for real changes to the country's marijuana laws.

The festival becomes a protest march through the streets at 2pm as part of the Global Marijuana March, which happens every year in cities around the world. Read more »

ctvtoronto.ca

Joints, bongs and plenty of smoke accompanied the thousands who gathered at Queen's Park to march in favour of legalizing marijuana on Saturday.

The 13th annual Global Marijuana March was organized to celebrate marijuana for both medical and recreational uses.

Matt Mernagh coordinated the Toronto chapter of the event after recently winning a court battle to be able to grow marijuana in Ontario.

Mernagh said, "We demonstrated that the medicinal marijuana program doesn't work in Canada. Less than one per cent of doctors are signing cards [for] medicinal marijuana applications, so the judge exempted me from cultivating marijuana because I can't get into the program." Read more »

By: Rob Salerno, Xtra News

Organizers of the five-year-old Toronto Freedom Festival were shocked in January when city officials told them they were being denied a permit for their annual pot-themed celebration in Queen’s Park this year. Without a permit, the festival remains on hold.

The Freedom Festival, which has grown in popularity every year, drew around 30,000 revellers in conjunction with the annual Global Marijuana March in 2010, according to police estimates.

That success has become the Festival’s biggest challenge. City officials say Queen’s Park can’t handle events at which more than 15,000 people gather without significant risk of damage to the park’s centuries-old trees and turf and without risk to the safety of gatherers. Read more »

By: ADRIAN MORROW, Globe and Mail

Organizers of a Toronto marijuana festival say the streets will be crawling with hungry, thirsty, blissed-out protesters if the city doesn’t change its decision to withhold a permit that would allow the group to use the lawn of Queen’s Park.

The Toronto Freedom Festival has been held since 2007 and happens at the same time as the Global Marijuana March in early May, providing food and entertainment to legalization protesters.

However, the festival appears to have become a victim of its own success, with city officials telling organizers that the size of the crowds – an estimated 40,000 people at last year’s festival – is too large for the park to accommodate. Read more »