RCMP seize medical pot users' plants

We must have far too many police officers in this fine country of ours. The RCMP have once again proven their uselessness by raiding the house of a medical patient that did not have the proper paperwork in place.

An Evansburg man who takes pot for his pain fears he's about to get sicker after police seized his weed yesterday.

Steve Chorney, 39, has been on painkillers for years, but over time they've started to damage his liver.

As an alternative, he started smoking pot under Health Canada's medical-marijuana program, but yesterday's police raid at his farm means he'll have to go back on his other pain medication.

"If I don't get off these pills, I'm going to die," he said.

I feel safer knowing this guy doesn't have his medicine. Go RCMP!

Health Canada makes Big Bucks on Schwag

Way back in 1999, the Ontario Supreme Court ruled that the ban on marijuana was unconstitutional because it deprived needy, sick people of valuable medicine. The Canadian government was required to provide medical marijuana. When the Ontario Supreme Court ruled that the government must supply medical marijuana to patients, it did not specify that the product must be affordable or of good quality. Because of this loophole, medical marijuana in Canada is at best a mishandled boondoggle and at worst a scandalous ripoff that would give satan a boner.

Prairie Plant Systems is the Saskatoon-based company that grows medicinal marijuana for Health Canada. They sell it to Health Canada for $328.75 per kilogram and they sell it to patients for $150 per ounce. That is a 1500% mark-up. That's bad enough, but the product that PPS sells is schwaggy, low-grade, moldy, contaminated garbage. This is what happens when reefer madness afflicted politicians do everything they can to make life difficult for medical patients.

Anne McLellan, Canada's Minister of Health, told the media that she was only allowing the marijuana to be sold because recent court rulings in Ontario gave her no choice. She said that she would immediately end the program if her ministry wins its appeal, but a decision was not expected until late October.Link

Montel Williams on Medical Marijuana

Thanks to Montel's support of medical marijuana, I just might consider tuning into his show, for the first time in over a decade. But first he will have to renounce that shameless scammer and snakeoil saleswoman Sylvia Browne.

New Study Shows Medical Value of Marijuana

Alternet has another great article about medical marijuana. Rob Kampia discusses the latest research on the effectiveness of medical marijuana for treating nerve pain in AIDS patients. Really interesting stuff. Maybe this will make me forget about Lou Dobbs. Grrrrr.

Reefer Madness from Margaret Trudeau

See, this is a perfect example of why people need to quit listening to celebrities. Being the ex-wife of a dead former Prime Minister does not validate your worthless opinions. Maggie Trudeau's reefer madness tour is a case in point.

Quitting cannabis has been an important part of her recovery from mental illness, Margaret Trudeau said Monday at a press conference in Vancouver for the Canadian Mental Health Association's upcoming Bottom Line Conference.

Trudeau, who suffers from bipolar disorder, spoke openly with reporters about her experience with depression and the effect of her long-term marijuana use.

"I loved marijuana. I was a hippie in the '60s," Trudeau said with a laugh.

"I started smoking at a young age. I took to it like a duck to water. Strawberry Fields Forever and all that."

Trudeau, who will be the keynote speaker at the Vancouver conference on March 7, said one of the difficulties in seeking help is the stigma associated with mental illness.

What works for Maggie must work for everybody, right? If smoking marijuana was a factor in her mental illness, then quitting was certainly the right thing to do. But to imply that this advice applies to everybody is foolish. Some people even use marijuana to treat their mental illnesses. I'm sure the Vancouver Sun will get right to work publishing their stories.

Op-Ed in the LA Times

Let them have their pot - sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

DEA Raids Eleven Compassion Clubs In Los Angeles

via CC

LOS ANGELES - Federal drug agents raided nearly a dozen medical marijuana clinics in California, seizing several thousand pounds of processed marijuana, along with weapons and money, authorities said.

Several people were detained, although no arrests were made after five dispensaries in West Hollywood and six others in Venice, Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley were searched Wednesday, said Sarah Pullen, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The raids highlighted a conflict between a California state law and the federal drug agency.

California voters in 1996 approved the Compassionate Use Act, which makes marijuana available by prescription for medicinal uses. The DEA, which does not recognize California laws legalizing medical marijuana use, has recently increased its enforcement.

Pullen declined to provide details of the latest investigation, saying the search warrants remained under seal.

Graphic Epileptic Seizure Footage

The following is footage of a tonic-clonic epileptic seizure. Watching this video was very educational and kind of disturbing. I have to admire Christine Lowe's bravery in showing this footage to the world.



Read more about the video here.

A Perfect Example of the Bullshit Biased Media

I have decided to bring you the following tale of a recent medical marijuana bust in Comox Valley, British Columbia. I am not going to bring my round up and analysis of events to the table because I feel this particular case is an extraordinary example of injustice against potheads. I have decided to do this round up because this case is a perfect example of the type of biased coverage that plagues pot bust stories in the media.

On Dec.22, the RCMP raided a compassion club known as the Cannabis Buyers Club of Canada. This club distributes high-quality and relatively low-cost medical marijuana to help sick people manage their pain. The founder of the club, Mark Russell is facing 6 charges of trafficking in a controlled substance.

"They came to the house at noon with a warrant and asked me to open the safe," says Russell. "They removed our medicine, documents, paperwork, client lists, everything."

Russell, who has run the Mid Island Compassion Club for the past five years and who has 85 clients, was taken to the Oceanside RCMP station in Parksville, fingerprinted and released.

"They were here for a total of about three hours," the Dashwood resident says. "I was ordered not to continue running the club or they would arrest me. I feel sick about this. Stunned."

What do you think motivated the RCMP to go after these peaceful potheads? Is arresting people for treating their medical conditions really going to make the world any safer or better? How many real crimes went uninvestigated while the cops were on a bullshit fishing expedition? Let's see what the RCMP has to say.

Comox Valley RCMP Const. Derek Kryzanowzki says the search warrant came as the result of an ongoing investigation that had been in progress for over a year.

"Essentially it was an ongoing investigation that culminated in getting a search warrant because of illegal activity going on there, which was trafficking in marijuana."

Kryzanowzki says the bust was not part of a coordinated campaign against medical marijuana compassion clubs, nor was it instigated by a complaint from the general public.

"It was self-generated through one of the members in the drug section who initiated the investigation," he says

No member of the public complained about the compassion club. The RCMP heard about the illegal activities and decided to investigate for a year before busting this club. You would think that costly year-long criminal investigations would be reserved for violent and dangerous criminals, not a bunch of sick people.

Unsurprisingly, people were outraged by the bust. The RCMP had copies of Russells' client list and are reasonably concerned that they may be targeted for arrest. The idea of the RCMP wasting a year to investigate a compassion club pisses a lot of people off and rightfully so. The Parksville Qualicum Beach News received a flood of angry LTE's decrying the actions of the RCMP. So the editorial staff decide to respond with this bit of rubbish:

DOUBLE TAKE

Our coverage of the raid of the Mid-Island Compassion Club resulted in a upsurge of letters and comments -- most of which decry the actions of police.

Blaming police for enforcing the laws ( whether you agree or not ) is an oversimplification of the issue. The use of marijuana as medicine in an age where it is seen as an illegal substance, demands better debate than berating those who disagree with a single point-of-view. If you can't debate without insulting your opponent, it's better to keep your mouth shut than prove you have no real point to make.

Dude, these potheads need to smoke a joint and mellow out. Being angry doesn't help anybody! The police were just doing their job when they spent a year investigating illegal activites that benefit people suffering from illness that the public had no complaints about. We live in such a safe and perfect society that the police need to find busy work. If the cops are that unnecessary let's put them to work as crossing guards at the local schools.

The newspaper redeemed itself by publishing some excellent LTE's that can be found here, here and here.

*I have to say I agree with what the editor said about Marc Emery's letter. I think he is better off when his letters die in the CC forums. Ugh.

Two sides of The Medical Marijuana Debate

There is an excellent article in the Canadian Family Physician that presents the medical marijuana issue from a doctors' perspective. It is highly enlightening to read that doctors are not immune from reefer madness. Look at some of these quotes from the NO side.

The main active ingredient in marijuana is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but both an oral THC and a buccal spray of THC and cannabidiol are available and are far safer than smoking dried cannabis. Cannabis smoke contains many of the same carcinogens as tobacco, and case-control studies suggest that cannabis smokers are at increased risk for prostate cancer and for head and neck cancer.3 Cannabis smokers are also at increased risk for bronchitis.4 Even if cannabis were vaporized and inhaled rather than smoked, the rapid delivery of high THC doses increases the risk of psychomotor impairment and addiction.

If you scroll down to the bottom to find the reference for the cancer claim, you find a study done by Donald Tashkin in 2002. Here is the article in question. What I would like to know is why this doctor chose to ignore this more recent study that did not show an association between marijuana smoking and cancer. Too bad I don't know a doctor that I can ask about this.

I am a bit curious about the claim that the rapid delivery of THC increases the risk of psycho-motor impairment. There is no study cited for that claim. But I have plenty of anecdotal evidence from experienced recreational users that the dosage of cannabis is much more difficult to control with orally ingested marijuana as opposed to smoked or vaporized marijuana. When you eat it you don't get the full effects for at least an hour. With smoked cannabis you feel the effects immediately. If you eat too much cannabis, you won't know it until the effects are felt an hour later. But why would you need to cite a study as proof of that claim when you have decades of reefer madness to rely on?

Under "Risks Associated with Use", we read about the risk factors of adolescent use of cannabis. I have no idea why this is relevant, unless there are adolescents out there with legal cannabis prescriptions.

From a public health perspective, the Health Canada program is fundamentally unjust and harmful. The program diverts resources to an unproven substance of uncertain efficacy with abuse liability, contributing to the public’s perception of cannabis as a harmless recreational product with therapeutic benefits.

I wonder if this guy lobbied the Tories to cut medical marijuana research funding. Coffee, sugar, sex, tobacco, online gambling, VLTs and shopping all have abuse potential. Should we ban those substances and activities too? And why is this relevant in an article about the medical uses of marijuana? So many questions, so little time.

Forty-seven percent of 18- to 19-year-olds in Canada have smoked cannabis in the past year, and 5% of Canadians report at least 1 concern related to cannabis. Six thousand patients were treated for cannabis dependence in Ontario in 2000, which likely represents a small fraction of those who need help. As one author stated, “… the costs to society are continuing to mount from past neglect of this continuing health problem.”11

What does this have to do with treating AIDS and cancer patients? How is continuing to deprive them of medicine going to help the plight of so-called addicts? Why is this relevant?

If legislators wish to decriminalize cannabis possession, they should do so without disguising it as medical therapy. Smoked medical marijuana is unnecessary and unsafe, especially in the doses allowed by Health Canada, and it distracts physicians and the public from the widespread harm caused by cannabis use and dependence.

Actually it's the public that wishes to decriminalize possession of cannabis. Legislators have been extremely reluctant to address this issue. The legal status of the drug is not relevant to the question of whether cannabis is a valid medical treatment. Even legal prescription drugs can be abused. I suspect reefer madness compels this doctor to believe that keeping marijuana illegal protects the public, despite the overwhelming evidence that illegal marijuana does not prevent people from using it.

Medical Marijuana licences on the Chopping Block in 2007?

There is a rumor going around on CC that medical marijuana users will no longer be able to grow their own medicine in the New Year. Production licences will not be renewed in the new year. Requiring medical users to pay $150 per ounce for a shoddy product from Prairie Plant Systems is unacceptable. This is terrible news. This will undo all the progress that medical users have made.

I will keep you posted.

Canadians Support Medical Cannabis

93% of Canadians support medical cannabis! Activism does pay off after all. This makes me happy that we have such an open-minded nation.

Prof asks university to take high road on prescription pot

A Toronto professor wants to smoke his prescription pot at the university where he works and is refusing to step onto campus until he can.

York University professor Brian MacLean says he has clearance from Health Canada for medical marijuana use for an undisclosed illness, but there is no place at work where he can smoke it.

"I have to medicate a lot," he says. "There's no issue here, well, can I restrain my medication on campus? No, I can't."

I am finding it very satisfying the way educators are getting involved in the fight to normalize and legalize the use of cannabis. This is the second time I have read about a university prof using marijuana as medicine and it is really nice to see.

I just wonder what is going to happen when it's an elementary or high school teacher that steps outside to use medical marijuana on a coffee break. I suspect there would be howls of outrage and more pleas for somebody to please think of the children.

And of course the 4:00 Friday "choir practice"* will continue unabated and unquestioned. I would still like to show up for choir practice with a bag of pre-rolled reefers but I suspect hell will freeze over before that happens.

* choir practice is the friendly euphemism announced on school intercoms on Friday afternoons which means, send the kiddles home and let's meet at the local pub for a refreshing alcoholic beverage, to celebrate another successful week of educating children.