Gambling and Drugs Tag

03 Feb 2015 Marijuana: Personal liberty or State responsibility?

This past year, ARPA's legal counsel hosted a discussion about marijuana with two political thinkers, Matt Bufton of the Institute for Liberal Studies and Joseph Ben-Ami of the Arthur Meighen Institute. The discussion focused on laws pertaining to marijuana and whether they should liberalized or kept the way they are now. During the discussion, André was able to interject with questions from a Christian perspective, challenging both Matt and Joseph on their positions. Thanks to the able assistance of our IT guy, Nate Bosscher, we have captured the best parts...

21 May 2013 Toronto casino is dead!

The plans for the new Toronto casino have crumbled in a pretty spectacular way. In a crushing defeat, the Toronto casino was sent to the dustbin of history with a vote of 38-6! What is most impressive about the story is that grassroots Canadians are credited with making it happen. Regular Canadians, worried about the health of families, concerned about the ability of small and mid-size businesses being able to compete with casinos and disgusted by the cruelty of governments making incredible sums of money off of addicts, these Canadians...

17 Apr 2013 Casinos cost more than you think Mr. Ford!

This week, ARPA Canada sent a letter to Toronto's Mayor Rob Ford and the 44 councillors urging them to reconsider the Mayor's position on building a casino in the downtown core. Mr. Ford is on record as advocating for the casino as a financial saviour of the city. Sadly, he has dismissed outright many of the social scientific evidence that demonstrates the incredible costs to the city in law enforcement and lost revenue for small and mid-size business as well as the heavy toll on addiction services and the losses...

14 Nov 2012 URGENT ACTION NEEDED: Senate Must Exercise Sober Second Thought on Sports-Betting Bill

In a troubling twist of process, Bill C-290, the sports-betting bill, has passed from the House of Commons into the Senate without a standing vote. This Bill seeks to legalize single-sport betting in Canada. For many reasons, including the inefficient use of government funds for revenue generation, the social ills it causes (including 200 suicides a year!), the undermining of the integrity of sport, and the dubious democratic process employed in this instance, we all need to urge the Senate to exercise their role as the Chamber of Sober Second Thought, and to stop the passage of Bill C-290. This is urgent - the Senate is almost done with the bill! We've made it easy to do. Just click on read more for a sample letter and the contact information for the Senators in your province. For more background, read this excellent op-ed by Member of Parliament Michael Chong as well as this article and letter to Ottawa City Council.

11 Nov 2012 Casino in the Capital: Short Term Gain or Long Term Pain?

The City of Ottawa recently sent a letter to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG), expressing interest in becoming a host city to a large gaming entertainment centre (read: casino). You can learn more about that story here. We were happy to hear that at least some councillors were hesitant about the idea, expressing concern over the social welfare of the city. ARPA Canada drafted a letter to Mayor Jim Watson and the 23 councillors outlining the risks and hidden costs of such a project and urging caution. Often...

21 Mar 2012 Gambling’s biggest addict

ARPA Note: Be sure to check out a witty new poem by ARPA reader Mr. A Blokhuis that speaks to this exact issue: Spin the Wheel, Suckers! By Derek Miedema, Researcher, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, March 21 2012: Who is Canada’s biggest gambling addict? As it turns out, our provincial governments. When times get hard, with deficits growing and debt piling up, governments turn to gambling to take up the slack. When regular folks overspend and go over budget, the usual response is not to open up a larger line of credit. Not so with governments. Not satisfied with high levels of taxation, and overspending at every turn, gambling took an average of $534 for every adult Canadian adult in 2011—money given directly to provincial coffers.

26 Oct 2011 LexView 74.0 – Can Injecting Illegal Drugs Ever Be Safe?

Cardus.ca: On September 30, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered the federal government to keep open the doors of a controversial "safe" injection site for drug addicts on Vancouver's tragic Downtown Eastside. It was an order LexView writer Kevin Boonstra says represents a serious error in judicial logic. There's no question, Boonstra agrees, that something must be done to help addicts in the deeply troubled neighbourhood. At the same time, it's dubious to claim the Insite facility is, in fact, safe. And the high...

22 Sep 2011 Study Debunks Vancouver Injection Site

For immediate Release, September 22, 2011: Drug Prevention Network of Canada - ERRONEOUS STUDY ON VANCOUVER INJECTION SITE EXPOSED Three Australian doctors, a Canadian Ph.D., and Dr. Robert Dupont, the President of the US National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), are part of an international team, which has exposed major, inexcusable errors in a highly influential 2011 Lancet study on Vancouver’s Insite injecting facility.  The study had claimed that the site has reduced overdose deaths in the immediate surrounding area (Down Town East Side-DTES). This recent analysis nullifies the Lancet study’s claims, which are found to be unsustainable.  According to data from the British Columbia’s Coroner’s office, the number of deaths from drug overdose in the drug injection area has not decreased, but increased each year from 2002 – 2007, despite Insite’s commencement in 2003 (see endnote).

19 Apr 2011 The Facts on Insite: Overdoses and Harm Reduction

Drug Prevention Network of Canada, Vancouver April 19, 2011: The leaders of the harm reduction movement, psychologists Dr. Thomas Kerr and Dr. Julio Montaner and Dr. Evan Wood, a health specialist, have written yet another advocacy study in promotion of the Vancouver drug injection site. None of these individuals is a drug treatment specialist.

29 Oct 2010 Government Gambling and Broken Families

By Derek Miedema, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada: Gambling in Canada is big business. Statistics Canada reports that gambling brought in over $13 billion in revenue in 2008.1 The decisions of British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces to allow government-sanctioned online gambling are a sign that governments still want more...