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reddeeradvocate.com

http://www.albertalocalnews.com/reddeeradvocate/news/local/Body_parts_made_here_for_electric_car_project_101554923.html

Body parts made here for electric car project

By Randy Fielder – Red Deer Advocate

Published: August 26, 2010 6:26 AM
Updated: August 26, 2010 6:42 AM

A foam block carved under the direction of a computer in a Sylvan Lake shop may be the start of extensive Central Alberta electric car manufacturing.

Fiber-Werx International Inc. began making a mould this week for the composite hemp door panels of the Kestrel, a four-seat electric car prototype. Built by Project Eve, a 15-company Canadian consortium, the Kestrel will range 40 to 160 km at up to 90 km/h before needing a recharge, depending on battery. It’s the first of five models that would be built over three years.

Consortium co-founder and Kestrel designer Motive Industries of Calgary contracted the custom fibreglass manufacturing and repair firm it has worked with before.

“We’ll be doing all the body parts, especially inner and outer skins,” said Fiber-Werx owner Scott Getschel, whose company also makes customized front grilles for SUVs converted to electric power by Vancouver’s Rapid Electric Vehicles.

A computer-controlled five-axis router turned a fibreglass foam block into the shape of the Kestrel’s door profile. The block will then be coated with tooling putty before coated again with fibreglass for the final mould.

A composite of hemp fibre and fibreglass would be injected into the mould to produce the door itself.

The light, low-cost hemp fibre replaces metal components, although not the frame. Hemp mats from plants grown near Vegreville were developed by Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures, the provincial Crown corporation that provides technical help and funding to help commercialize new technologies.

“We’ll work with them on using the fibre,” said Getschel.

If things go well, Getschel said he’d expand his 17,000-square-foot plant to take on all of Project Eve’s manufacturing needs.

If the Kestrel meets expectations, up to 20 electric vehicles could be made next year — and Derek Gratz hopes to build them here.

Gratz, Red Deer College’s director of applied research and innovation, recently met with Motive Industries president Nathan Armstrong to discuss Project Eve’s plans to use select Canadian polytechnic schools to work on its electric vehicles.

Gratz hopes RDC automotive service students would construct the Kestrel body before it’s sent elsewhere for final assembly.

There’s potential to have students studying power and control systems work on later models.

“Their first generation of prototypes is really well suited to us here. It should be a really cool opportunity.”

Gratz, whose first degree was in automotive design, credited collaboration between business, government and colleges for the chance to work on the electric car.

“How do we get industry involved with our students? How do we diversify this economy and get oil and gas expertise engaged in that diversification? It’s the connectivity within the system.”

Despite their optimism, Gratz and Getschel both said everything depends on Project Eve getting the necessary investor or government funding to carry on with design and manufacture.

The Kestrel will be unveiled at the Electric Vehicle conference and trade show in Vancouver, Sept. 13 to 16.

SORRY I SHOULD HAVE POSTED THIS A WHILE AGO.

Globe and Mail

Letters to The Editor: Letters@globeandmail.com

Complaint sparks police raid on marijuana compassion club

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nati…article1662165/

CALM, which sells pot to chronic-pain sufferers, targeted for second time in six months

Sarah Boesveld

Globe and Mail Update

Published on Wednesday, Aug. 04, 2010 7:34PM EDT

Acting on a “community complaint,” police raided a downtown club where ill patients go to buy medical marijuana – the second raid on the operation in less than six months.

At about 4 p.m. Wednesday, officers from 51 Division executed a search warrant at CALM Compassion Club, which operates behind a storefront at 106 Queen St. East.

Police seized a quantity of marijuana and hashish, said Detective Jim Brons, who was among the 12 officers who entered the club.

They also arrested club owner Neev Tapiero at his apartment around the corner from CALM, which stands for Cannabis as Living Medicine, said Mr. Tapiero’s lawyer, Ron Marzel, who specializes in battling the country’s marijuana laws.

Another man, who was in the apartment with Mr. Tapiero, was arrested, too. Pending charges include possession of marijuana and hashish for the purpose of trafficking, Det. Brons said.

He led the fleet of officers who raided the compassion club at the end of March. That raid was also based on a community complaint, Det. Brons said.

According to Mr. Marzel, the complaints are coming from a neighbour who is trying to lease a property near CALM and has complained about a smell of marijuana coming from the club.

“It’s just another nuisance,” Mr. Marzel said, adding that, to his knowledge, the neighbour never complained to Mr. Tapiero directly.

CALM was out of commission for two weeks after the March raid, leaving patients who suffer from HIV/AIDS, Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis without the marijuana that soothes their pain, Mr. Marzel said.

It reopened after the court decided there should be no conditions imposed on Mr. Tapiero due to patients’ very limited access to medical marijuana as per Health Canada regulations, Mr. Marzel said.

He and Mr. Tapiero attended a meeting with Health Canada officials a month and a half ago to advocate licensing establishments such as CALM, where people must have solid proof from doctors that they need the drugs to help alleviate their symptoms.

Right now, people who need medical marijuana can only get it from Prairie Plant Systems, which grows marijuana out of a mine shaft near Flin Flon, Man. Only about 20 per cent of medical-marijuana users take advantage of this, Mr. Marzel said, because the strain doesn’t ease the pain of their illnesses. They could also grow it on their own, which can be a challenge for people suffering debilitating diseases, or they can get it from certain individuals who are only allowed to produce marijuana for two patients.

About seven officers remained at the club into the evening retrieving the drugs, Det. Brons said.

He said that while there are other compassion clubs in the city, he doesn’t know of any others besides CALM that have been raided by police.

“I don’t think they’ve actually received any complaints,” he said.

National Post

http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/08/26/council-votes-to-endorses-decriminalization-of-drug-use/

Council votes to endorse decriminalization of drug use

Zoe McKnight
August 26, 2010 – 9:33 pm

Toronto City Council voted to endorse the Vienna Declaration on Thursday, raising a loud voice against the war on drugs.

“The war against drugs has failed,” said city councillor Kyle Rae, who brought the declaration to council after attending the AIDS 2010 international conference this July, where it was announced. “In every jurisdiction and in every community, we know that policing this issue is not enough.”

The principles of the declaration favour a public health approach to dealing with drug addicts, rather than enforcing ever-stricter drug laws, which advocates say doesn’t work, and in fact can cause greater harm.

“Just as clearly as we know HIV is the cause of AIDS, we know the war on drugs doesn’t achieve its stated objectives and contributes to a range of harms, including the spread of HIV,” said Dr. Evan Wood, a research physician who studies infectious disease at the University of British Columbia, and who chaired the writing committee.
Each HIV patient costs the Canada health-care system $250,000, Dr. Wood said.

“The Canadian health-care system is groaning under the weight of the downstream consequences of drug addiction and our real bumbling policies to address it,” he said.

A public health approach to addiction typically includes methadone clinics, safe injection or consumption sites, and the decriminalization of drugs, as recommended by the United Nations and World Health Organization.

“We know, using the U.S. as a case study, that about $2.5-trillion has been spent trying to reduce the supply of drugs in the States. Despite that effort, drugs are more freely and easily available than they have been at any time in our history,” Dr. Wood said. “The purity has gone up, the price has gone down. Basically, every indicator shows that the problem is getting worse. Huge sums of money have been spent on tough-on-drugs approaches like our being proposed by our federal government.”

Dr. Wood acknowledged Toronto’s endorsement could “release a hornet’s nest of controversy.” A feasibility study on a safe consumption site in Toronto erupted in controversy when it was announced last year, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he wants to shut down Insite, Vancouver’s safe injection site. This month, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day faced criticism for his $9-billion plan to build more prisons in Canada. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced new police powers to crack down on organized crime like gambling, drugs and prostitution, including tighter parole and bail restrictions, and harsher minimum sentences for drug trafficking.

But the Vienna Declaration is a movement to end all that. It reads:

“The criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed.”

Dr. Wood said that the purpose is to encourage an approach that uses the evidence collected by criminologists, scientists, doctors and economists to assess how drug laws affect other social policies.

“If we realize the overemphasis on law enforcement doesn’t achieve its stated objectives, contributes to a range of harms and basically wastes taxpayers’ dollars, then we need a complete paradigm shift,” he said. “Drug law enforcement displaces public health approaches and drives people to the margins of society where HIV is spread, overdoses happen, violence happens.”

Portugal decriminalized drug use ten years ago and today has the lowest rate of cannabis use in the EU and lower overdose and HIV infection rates.

Holland, which has famously lax drug laws, has a lower marijuana consumption rate than Canada, Dr. Wood said.

There are jurisdictions that are beginning to realize that throwing hundreds of billions of dollars, over the last 20 years, at policing this issue, has tragically failed. There needs to be other approaches, Mr. Rae said.

But embracing the Vienna Declaration does not mean Toronto is any closer to its own safe consumption site, said Councillor Gord Perks, chair of the Toronto Drug Strategy board.

It’s a declaration, not a prescription,² Mr. Perks said. It would simply reinforce the existing Toronto Drug Strategy. For example, Public Health workers already hand out safe crack kits to prevent the spread of hepatitis and have numerous other programs for drug users.

Mr. Rae said he had not heard from Toronto police or city councils in other cities today after the 33-7 vote was announced.

In September, Dr. Wood and his colleagues plan to send letters to political figures around the world to ask them for an endorsement as well. The Declaration was drafted by international scientists and experts and has been endorsed by more than 16,000 people including some Nobel laureates, UN special envoy Stephen Lewis and the former presidents of Colombia, Brazil and Mexico.

DWalker@nanaimodailynews.com