The headline in Friday's paper reads:Oppal calls for calm after shooting.This is the same Wally Oppal that recently called for a return to the habitual criminal act.His solicitor General John Les actually used the word habitual,Wally substituted chronic offender but the thought was exactly the sameThese people know exactly why people are dying.They know the drug laws as they stand now are killing people and will continue to do so until something is done.Unfortunately,they still think the answer lies somewhere in the current system of jail,enforcement,policing and the court and criminal justice system.I have no idea how their minds work or how they think that the drug problem,which has gotten consistently worse,can be solved with more of the same.The stats keep getting muddled and the death toll is either pumped up or down played,depending on the point they're trying to make.Right now the plan seems to be to play down peoples fear as the bodies are really starting to pile up.I was recently in contact with the head of the Green party(she actually wrote me herself)and they want to end this war.The Liberal party of B.C.

I just received a note from a friend at DIGG that tells of a mayor asking that a school trustee resign because he had the nerve to vote for legal marijuana.There were 192 others that voted the same wa

Just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning, the cartels controlling the cocaine trade will continue to expand their operations and defy US-funded eradication efforts in South America.

RIO DE JANEIRO, March 17 (UPI) -- A large-scale coca plant and cocaine production operations have been discovered in Brazil, the first of their kind, authorities said

At least four separate farms were found in the Amazon rain forest by way of satellite imagery analyzed by Brazilian officials, Agencia Estado news agency reported Monday.

The discovery shocked authorities, as coca plants do not normally thrive in the dense, humid Amazon rain forest. [UPI]

I suppose these precious rainforests become less humid when you burn them down to plant coca. Now that they know it works, we can expect much, much more of this. I wrote recently about the inevitable destruction of rainforests throughout South America if we continue mindlessly chasing coca production in circles. This latest move into Brazil is another step towards that outcome.

The thriving cocaine industry cannot be stopped, but it can be regulated and controlled to prevent violence, corruption, and environmental destruction. Some might call this "giving up," but when you're doing something so phenomenally expensive and ineffective, giving up eventually becomes your only option. Besides, I'd rather give up on the drug war than the rainforest anyway.