A JOINT AFFAIR: THE SUFFERING FEW WHO LEGALLY POSSESS MARIJUANA

For nearly four hours last Friday I sat with seven or eight other
people in the kitchen of a Cramahe Township home, immersed in the
sweet smelling smoke of "home grown." Smack dab in the middle of what
used to be known as tobacco country, these folks were firing up
cigarettes of a different kind.

This was marijuana ... cannabis, reefer, pot, bud ... and for most of the
people in that small room, smoking a joint was not a criminal act.

The marijuana being consumed at the house was also grown there.
Twenty-four different strains of cannabis as a matter of fact, with
exotic names like California Orange, Juicy Fruit, and Blueberry. The
table was covered with labelled bags, each earmarked for a particular
"customer."

The customers are "exemptees," people approved by Health Canada to
smoke, drink, or otherwise ingest marijuana for medical purposes. They
are HIV/Aids victims, people suffering from cancer and painful,
debilitating diseases, and those who have survived serious accident
and injury to live their lives in agony. They have found that
marijuana helps to relieve their suffering.

Thanks to changes in federal legislation introduced earlier this year,
these people can now get that relief legally.

Section 56 of Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) was
amended on July 31 to provide exemptions for approved individuals to
possess marijuana for "a medical or scientific purpose." In basic
terms, the law states a person can become an exemptee in one of three
categories, if medical practitioners agree that all other means of
relief have been exhausted, and the doctors also agree that the
benefits of using marijuana as a treatment outweigh any risks.

Applicants in the first category are terminally ill, with one
physician confirming a prognosis of less than 12 months to live. In
category three, applicants must have two medical practitioners attest
that they suffer from symptoms of a serious medical condition that
cannot be relieved through any known conventional treatment.

Most exemptees come from the middle category, and suffer from some of
society's more debilitating illnesses. AIDS/HIV infection. Multiple
Sclerosis. Cancer. Spinal cord injury and disease. Severe forms of
Arthritis. Epilepsy.

Symptoms can range from seizures, and injuries associated with them,
to constant nausea, severe pain, muscle spasms, and anorexia. Category
two exemptees have reached the point where popping pills, or ingesting
chemical cocktails designed to "kill" their disease, is not working,
and the treatment has often become worse than the illness.

Joanne Sauve has lived with cancer for 18 years. She has undergone
conventional treatments and numerous surgeries, including the removal
of tumors from her breasts and neck. She hemorrhages easily, and
cannot take pills. Treatments have made her anorexic. Recently she was
also diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a painful condition of the muscles,
ligaments and tendons.

Joanne finds smoking marijuana provides pain relief, and stimulates
her appetite, without any side effects of nausea or bleeding. But the
cost of using this alternative medicine, in both monetary and social
terms, is very high.

Exemptees are allowed to possess one month's supply of the drug at any
given time. That means a person prescribed a daily dose of 3 grams can
hold a maximum of 90 grams of marijuana. Alternately, they are allowed
to grow up to seven plants for their own use. Depending on the strain
of pot, the harvest yield, and the amount required to provide constant
relief from symptoms, the minimum amounts just begin to address the
problem, she said.

Police continue to view possession of marijuana as a crime, many
medical and hospital staff are skeptical, and social workers display
open prejudice towards exemptees, she said. For a person suffering
from conditions she did not ask to have, Joanne finds those attitudes
stressful.

"It's a lot of stress, and the more stress I have, the harder it is to
get better," she said.

"We want to fight our diseases and get better, not fight the
government and get worse," Joanne said.

Northumberland OPP Drug Squad officer Bill O'Shea is one of those
government people who are skeptical. He is against legalizing
marijuana for any purpose, but concedes people suffering from serious
illnesses may believe pot provides relief.

"I am convinced marijuana is a gateway drug for other illegal use,"
O'Shea said, "but hey, if you are suffering and tell me that blue
Smarties ease your pain, who am I to say that blue Smarties don't work
for you?"

O'Shea is aware that Sauve has contracted with Lady Dyz Helping Hands
to grow marijuana for her under Section 56 regulations. He is also
aware that Sauve's Cramahe garden has been visited by members of the
drug squad, and raided by non-exemptees trying to steal the plants.

The legislation stipulates that marijuana grown for medical use must
be guarded sufficiently to prevent theft or pilferage. Dianne Bruce,
owner of Lady Dyz, has eight feet of wire fence attached to large
cedar poles around the perimeter of her 10-metre-square garden. She
has five dogs on her property, and over $5,000 worth of video cameras
and floodlights to deter thieves.

And still they come by night, sneaking through surrounding woods and
fields to grab marijuana plants through the fence. Two weeks ago,
thieves cut a hole in the wire large enough for a small man to crawl
through. Dianne, her partner Jerry, and two volunteers whose mother
and aunt is dying from AIDS in Peterborough, now take turns keeping a
24-hour vigil on the patch.

"It makes me really angry that these inconsiderate idiots try to steal
our medicine," Dianne said. "We pooled our money, we pooled our
resources, and we pooled our plants to provide help for a lot of
people who are hurting."

"These thieves don't understand the damage they are doing to us," said
Joanne. "We have to take back our power and control because we get
pushed around a lot."

While we discussed the cause in the kitchen last week, exemptees
phoned Lady Dyz steadily. At last count, Sauve and other licensed
people were using the Cramahe base to grow and supply marijuana for 56
exemptees.

"Fifty-six for Section 56," beamed Dianne.

One of that group is Robin Hoyer, living with AIDS in Burlington,
Ontario. Sexually assaulted at the age of 17, Robin was diagnosed
HIV-positive the next year. The condition changed to full-blown AIDS
ten years later in 1996.

Robin believes deeply in a more holistic approach to fighting his
disease. He rarely smokes marijuana, and prefers to make tea with his
allotment. Among the things he gets from the herb is steady relief
from the bowel dysfunction that almost always occurs with AIDS. He
uses pot to augment the daily "stay of execution" he gets from a
twice-daily regimen of protein inhibitors.

"I found while living in California that the ones who were surviving
and living better with AIDS were smoking marijuana," Robin said. "It
triggers something in the immune system."

But the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) says there is no "concrete
scientific evidence" to support the therapeutic benefits of using
marijuana, and has cautioned physicians against signing documents for
exemptees, or people hoping to get Section 56 approval.

CMA head Dr. Peter Barrett said federal health minister Allan Rock has
"put the cart before the horse" in giving marijuana medical status,
putting the onus on physicians to decide who should, or should not be
allowed to use the drug. That decision makes doctors "gatekeepers" and
Canadian physicians would be advised not to support applications for
exemption under Section 56, he said.

That's little comfort for Don Erwin, a married man with three
children, who lives on disability support in Cobourg. Erwin lived and
worked with chronic back pain since herniating a disc in 1983. While
doing concrete work five years ago, another disc "basically blew out,"
he said.

"I have gone through surgery for the damage, but it's pretty much 24/7
pain, and it's getting worse," Don said.

Don's family doctor has refused to support his application "on legal
and ethical grounds" provided by the CMA, he said. That leaves him no
alternative but to get grass illegally.

"I refuse to be a guinea pig for some giant pharmaceutical company any
more," Don said. "I hope to find a sympathetic doctor, but in the
meantime the only relief I get is from pot."

Drug companies may soon be involved in full-scale production of
medical marijuana. The herb's active ingredient, tetrahydracannabinol
(THC), is already available over the counter under the names CESAMET
(used to counteract nausea in cancer victims), and MARINOL (an
appetite inducer for HIV-AIDS patients).

But the people gathered together last week have tried the pill forms
of THC, stating a 5 mg dose made them too high to function, and was
always followed by severe nausea and vomiting. Only by using the plant
directly are any therapeutic benefits derived, they said.

And legislators also recognize the need to find ways to supply
marijuana legally on a larger scale, effectively cutting drug dealers
out of the picture.

In Flin Flon, Manitoba, the federal government has committed $5.8
million to a commercial marijuana farm located 300 metres below ground
in an abandoned mine. After experiments and testing, the first crop is
expected to be ready for distribution to exemptees in 2003.

In the meantime, Dianne, Joanne and Robin make no apologies to critics
of the Section 56 program.

"My friends are sick and dying," Dianne said. "I can't turn my back on
them."