OF CANNABIS AND COMPASSION

I'm going to take you on a trip. A drug trip. The drug is marijuana. But
don't worry - you, the reader, don't have to smoke it, eat it, buy it or
sell it. You just have to think about it.

And meet the people who do just that, all their waking hours. We'll take
this trip together. I'll be your guide. And when it's over, you'll realize
that marijuana is not what you think it is.

For one thing, it's no longer illegal. Or, if we need a finer shade of
grey, it's tolerated, or quasi-legal - legal under some circumstances, but
not others.

For another, the marijuana trade in B.C. is not the sure-fire
million-dollar bonanza hyped in the national and United States media. In
fact, the vast majority of people in the trade make a modest living, or
less. And some sell marijuana not for the money at all, but to help others
and advance the cause of legalization, decriminalization, or even the
celebration of pot as the wonder plant a God-given, mind-expanding,
universal source of food, fuel, fiber and healing.

Our trip begins at the CBC in downtown Victoria. No, not the radio
station, but the Cannabis Buyers Club, a white and red low-rent building on
Johnson. The sign on the door says Smith's Books, and in the window you see
hard-covers with titles like The Complete Beauty Workshop and A Day in the
Forest. But I'm here to tell you this book store is a front, quite
literally. The same used books sit in the window, week after month.

Let's go in. Smell the incense, hear Jimi Hendrix on the tape deck. In the
back room, a well-worn couch, a few chairs, a desk with a scale and three
small glass jars filled with marijuana. The jars are hand-labelled: Happy
Robot, Strawberry Red-Haired Bob. Prices are posted on the wall: $10 a gram
and $215 an ounce for triple-A indoor bud, the highest grade of potent
flowering tops.

Pick up a jar. Those tiny ice-like formations on the bud are THC
crystals. Now smell it. If you're a marijuana user, you'll say, `Wow!"

You're probably wondering how anyone can sell marijuana in a bookstore in
downtown Victoria. Well, this isn't just any marijuana, this is medical
marijuana. It's for pain, nausea or depression, to stimulate your appetite
or relieve the symptoms of glaucoma, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis. Or
whatever else ails you. If you don't like to smoke, the CBC offers
marijuana cookies - chocolate chip, shortbread, ginger snaps, 50 cents or a
buck - or a vial of oil-based pot salve to rub on your skin.

Sit down on the couch. Watch people come in. Many buy a gram or an eighth
of an ounce. The woman behind the desk weighs it carefully. Don't stare at
the man in the wheel-chair with the dirty hat, the same guy you've seen
panhandling. Or the husky, dark-haired man in the T-shirt who barely
survived an accident and moves as slowly as a baby learning to walk.

OF POT AND PROOF

Here's the shopkeeper, Ted Smith. He's tall, lean, 32, wears jeans worn
through at the knees and a T-shirt with the message, "You might as well
grow it. There's no fish or trees left any more."

To become a member of the CBC, you need proof of an incurable medical
condition. That sounds severe; but besides frightening terminal illnesses
like cancer and AIDS, "incurable" can also cover backache, depression,
asthma. "Proof" can be a note from your doctor or other healer, a WCB form
or even the' inhaler you use to clear your lungs.

Smith has been selling medical marijuana in Victoria for nearly six years,
and while he's never been arrested for it, he can never be sure he won't
be. He struggles for the words to explain the CBC's legal status. "It's a
grey area, a very fine grey area ... but it's still grey"

This status is a result of a delicate balance between courts, police, the
federal government and medical marijuana sellers and buyers. Medical
marijuana enjoys a level of immunity from the law due to several court
cases acquitting patients who use it, including an Ontario ruling that
ordered the government to make medical marijuana available to those needing it.

So the federal government is growing a crop in - of all places - an
abandoned copper mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba. That crop won't be ready
until next February, so could a judge convict a patient for buying
marijuana on the quasi-legal market, if none is available legally? Not
likely. At least until February, it seems Smith's grey area is as close to
white as it's ever been.

"If it's not illegal," he says, "it must be legal."

Smith feels the CBC hasn't been busted because of his work as a community
activist. He's worked with groups that help street people and inner city
youth, and served on the mayor's task force on downtown safety. For a
marijuana dealer, he enjoys a measure of public respectability. But
discretion is still advised. CBC members are not allowed to smoke pot on
the premises, or resell their purchases (tempting, because the price per
ounce is significantly lower than street costs).

Suddenly our conversation is interrupted by a man and his teenage son. The
man calmly explains that, like him, his son is HIV-positive. He believes
his son contracted it from him, as did the rest of the family, by using the
same dishes and cutlery. He wants Smith to supply his son with marijuana
"so he doesn't have to get it on the street" Smith tells him he'll have to
come back with a doctor's certificate.

Buying pot at the CBC may be quasi-legal, but tolerance is at the
discretion of the police. Growers and dealers who supply the CBC may also
enjoy legal immunity especially if they can satisfy a judge that they only
sell their crop for medical marijuana. At least one local indoor grower has
a sign posted at his grow-op indicating just that.

When it comes to openly smoking marijauna on the street, police tolerance
decreases, although the bust usually results in confiscation, not charges.
"This is a tourist town and the downtown merchants don't like to see people
smoking pot on the streets," says Smith, who is working to change that.

In the marijuana movement, there are two types of reformer: medical
marijuana suppliers who sell pot to the sick and activists who challenge
the laws through advocacy and street protest. Smith does both. He's
distributed free pot cookies and joints, and led mass smoke-ins at the
University of Victoria, on downtown streets and in Beacon Hill Park. He's
also written a book called Hempology 101 - self-published and hand-bound
with hemp rope. In it, he writes that cannabis can be used for over 30,000
products. To him, marijuana is not just a drug or a herb. It's a cure, a
political cause, a subculture, a religion, a revolution.

Ironically (but not surprisingly), Smith's out-front street work has led to
charges of trafficking and possession for the purpose, although his street
activism involves only a tiny fraction of the pot he distributes through
the CBC. One arrest was for a smoke-in at UVic, another for distributing
pot cookies at the Central Library. He seems eager to argue his case in
court next month. It will be one of several marijuana cases due to be
heard across the country this fall that will be argued on constitutional
grounds.

Acquittals or discharges could further weaken the drug laws, or (the dream
of the pot lobby) throw them out entirely.

The issue has been passed around like a dead roach at the political level
for more than 30 years in this country. The evidence that persecution of
marijuana smokers does more harm than good, that marijuana is relatively
benign when used recreationally, and a helpful medicine for the chronically
ill far outweighs arguments against legalization. But marijuana has been
kept in criminal chains by our politicians, drug lawyers, pharmaceutical
companies and other beneficiaries of the war on drugs. Behind their backs,
marijuana is gradually becoming legalized by default.

COMPASSION CLUB

Now I'll blindfold you because Victoria's other pot shop - yes, there are
two - doesn't want its location revealed. It's the Vancouver Island
Compassion Society, 360-8955. Its web-site is www.thevics.com.

We're here. Take off the blindfold and meet Philippe Lucas, the society's
founder and director. In his button-down blue checked shirt, cuffed dockers
and mod glasses, Lucas looks more like a refugee from JDS Uniphase than a
stoner. The VICS shop resembles a medical office, or at least an
alternative therapy clinic.

Lucas claims to be one of the leading experts on medical marijuana in the
country, and reels off an impressive list of cures of conditions ranging
from Huntington's chorea to Hepatitis C. He talks rapidly, describing the
relief he provides to his 200 members, and his 70 percent to 80 percent
success rate.

In particular, it helps AIDS patients, whose drug treatments often produce
nausea and loss of appetite. "They're literally wasting away. Their body is
constantly fighting the disease and they can't process the food they eat."
There are no effective pharmaceutical appetite stimulants, he says. A toke
in the morning literally gets them out of bed, and as any dope smoker will
attest, to the breakfast table.

This can save or at least extend their lives. It's ironic that we're
talking about - how marijuana can help, when the scare stories of another
era focused on how much it could hurt, drive you insane, leave you
lethargic, abandoned and penniless.

Lucas is careful about approving members of his club. Patients and their
doctors must complete a three-page form, and the VICS - confirm the
condition with the doctor before setting up an appointment for
registration. It may seem excessively bureaucratic, but Lucas says he's
careful. Despite all his cross-checking, the compassion society got busted
last year when it was located in Oak Bay.

Someone broke into the office and stole some supplies, and when Lucas
complained to the Oak Bay police, they charged him with trafficking and
possession for the purpose. That didn't shut the VICS down, but it did
encourage them to relocate on the edge of downtown Victoria.

I find it remarkable that these dealers of medical pot seem to be motivated
more by the cause than any personal gain. Lucas says the VICS owes him
$20,000 in unpaid wages and he's forgiven an $8,000 debt the society owed
him. For three months after the bust, he didn't collect a salary He says
the club provides him with "a living wage and nothing else" So why does he
do it? "I'm doing something that interests me and can help people."

Smith seems to get by on even less, living in a one-room loft apartment
close to the CBC. He hitchhikes to his girlfriend's house in Cobble Hill on
the weekends. "I could make a lot of money if I wanted to, but I only take
enough to feed myself. Everything else is invested back into the club," he
says.

CASH CROP

So if it's, not at the medical marijuana level, where's the big B.C. dope
money? It must be reaped by the growers, those under ground green thumbs
with high powered lights and ingenious tricks to fool the cops, BC Hydro
and the U.S. border patrol.

But evidence indicates few growers make much money either. Lucas estimates
that three to five percent are doing well, 75 per cent are at a subsistence
level and 20 percent are losing their shirts. Others in the industry,
including several growers I talked to, confirm his estimate. The National
Post had a story last summer about the easy million-dollar take growing pot
in B.C., but the reality is it's a demanding, difficult business that
churns out scores of paupers and few millionaires.

The plants need daily care, costs of equipment and power are high, and a
host of bugs, worms and moulds - and knocks on the door at night - can wipe
you out.

Yet the allure of easy money in a homegrown business, and the shortage of
other options, has attracted thousands of newcomers to the trade in recent
years, driving down the price from as high as $3,700 a pound to the current
$2,400, squeezing profit margins even tighter. So where's the $6-billion
B.C. pot economy touted by the Organized Crime Agency? It must be in
Vancouver, the big, er, smoke. Let's go to visit Marc Emery, the Prince of Pot.

We find him at Hastings near Cambie, in the biggest head shop you've ever
seen. It's the headquarters of the Marijuana Party, as well as web-based
PotTV and Cannabis Culture, the marijuana magazine, all part of Emery's
empire. Emery is a Tim Robbins look-alike, hair slicked back, jeans and
open-necked shirt, rocket-fuel energy and endless, rapid-fire replies to my
questions. He sells marijuana seeds, hundreds of varieties, some for as
much as $40 each, from his website, emeryseeds.com.

Now here's where the money is. He takes in $2-million-plus a year. But the
Prince of Pot, it turns out, is even more of a do-gooder than Smith and
Lucas. He claims he gives away 90 percent of his money to the cause. Name
an important marijuana challenge in B.C., including Lucas's, and it's
likely Emery is footing the legal bill. Last year, he estimates, he put up
$400,000 for court costs alone.

He also funds his media outlets and the Marijuana Party which ran
candidates in every B.C. riding last spring. "That's what I raise the money
for, not for my personal wealth."

The B.C. marijuana industry earns more like $4 billion than $6 billion,
says Emery, spread among thousands of growers, processors, shippers and
dealers across the province. A decentralized, diversified industry and a
cash crop that brings a consistent flow of U.S. dollars into the province -
and no countervailing tariffs. The price doubles once you get it across the
border.

As his machine-gun rap continues, someone walks by Emery's desk and asks
for some bud. Emery reaches into a bag and gives him a handful. A few
minutes later, he gives away more. No one who asks, it seems, is turned
away. I'm tempted, but hey, we're working. Later, another man comes by and
Emery peels off $1,250 in $50- dollar bills and gives it [to] him, then
checks off the amount on a chit. This man asks for pot as well, and Emery
hands him the rest of the bag.

Emery's big push right now is to open as many medical marijuana shops as he
can before pot is fully legal, which he predicts will be by the end of
2002. He plans to start 10 by the end of this year. "I have to make sure
distribution doesn't just end up in government hands."

When pot is fully legal, Emery and other Campaigners won't give up the
fight. They'll demand a court of inquiry to seek compensation for the
thousands of people whose lives were ruined by the war on drugs.

"It's outrageous. The government has known for 30 or 40 years there's
nothing wrong with marijuana. We'll have to find out why the government
did nothing while people were hunted down?' And with that he's gone, out
the back door. He has to run his seed business, out of a safe house
somewhere in the Lower Mainland, that he rotates every two or three weeks.

So what have we learned on our trip? That the movable force called the
marijuana revolution has only just begun.