City of Surrey wants to know if you're sick
Surrey mayor Dianne Watts often receives fawning media coverage, but sometimes the truth slips through.
This is one of those days.
The City of Surrey will escalate its money-losing war on drugs and create a stigma for residents who are eligible to use medicinal marijuana.
That's because council has endorsed a proposed bylaw requiring licensed medical-marijuana consumers and growers to register for permits from the city.
Yes, sick people in Surrey could soon be forced to disclose to city hall that they're ill.
According to the proposed bylaw, if they don't, the gendarmes will fine people no less than $100 and no more than $5,000, plus the cost of prosecution.
If it passes, the Beyond Prohibition Foundation says it will take the city to court.
The last time I checked, health care was a provincial jurisdiction. But not in Surrey under Mayor Watts—until a B.C. Supreme Court justice sets her straight.
Comments
2 Comments
monty/that's me
Jun 1, 2011 at 2:30pm
She can start by patrolling the grounds around Memorial Hospital and catch all the patients wandering about. Then again, a toke or two may be safer than the drugs peddled inside this facility where this Mayor has allowed expanded gambling facilities.
Martin de Pateshull
Jun 6, 2011 at 6:42am
This is an unlawfuls statute the effect of which will be to obstruct the personal security and the health of an already vulnerable population. The population media has far too many accounts as it is of authorized medicinal marihuana users being harassed and falsely imprisoned by police officers, so this is simply another aspect of a broken program---not only are doctors hostile toward people who require medical marihuana, see http://www.whyprohibition.ca/sites/default/files/Matthew%20Mernagh%20%20... (R v. Mernagh), now municipalities are getting in on the hostility.
Diane Watts, if you really care about the safety of medical marihuana grows, you would provide some sort of public facility wherein medical marihuana users could grow. It could be a well-known facility in an industrial part of town. The electrical could be well-inspected, etc. etc. But I suspect you do not want to do anything of the sort; you want to maintain a registry of residential addresses where marihuana is grown so that you can find pretexts for harassing these people.
Your City Solicitor "CRAIG MacFARLANE" has mis-advised you: "Local governments can regulate marijuana production under their zoning and licensing powers provided they are not in direct conflict with the federal regulations" is false. You are not allowed to encroach upon the personal security and health of sick individuals, nor upon their privacy.
Further, a cursory review of the bylaw as drafted, which states that "the growing operation layout...must be located in an enclosed building..." directly conflicts with the Federal Regulation, which allows for outdoor gardens.
Further, you kids are trying to obstruct public medication, see 25(c) "It shall be unlawful for any person to take Marijuana for medical use in any form in plain view of, or in a place open to, the general public, and for the purposes of this By-law, places open to the general public include without limitation any property owned, leased or used by a public entity, retail malls, businesses open to the public, common areas of a building or in vehicles visible from a place open to the general public."
You can be sick and take your medicine---as long as no suburban retarded folk are subjected to seeing you do it! Absolutely disgusting statute, wholly intended vex and to frustrate the personal security and health of sick people.
Shame, shame, shame!