RED LEAF AIMS TO CUT MEDICAL MARIJUANA'S RED TAPE

An ad caught my eye the other day. "Interested in Your Right to Access
Marijuana as an Alternative therapy?" Why, yes I am. I've got the most
curious tingling in my finger tips and a recommendation from the Shaman Ali
Baba Blunt that a dose of the persecuted herb baked into my moussaka may be
just the thing to calm the tremor.

So last Friday I ventured into the offices of the Merlin Project at 319
West Pender just in time for a press conference. On behalf of a young man
recently made paraplegic by a motor vehicle accident, they'd sealed an
expeditiously completed set of Health Canada forms for the access to
medical cannabis, including the medical practitioner forms, applicant
forms, designated grower and property owner consent forms and information
regarding the designated growers' criminal record check.

As the package was handed over to a courier to be FedExed to the Office of
Cannabis Medical Access, a representative from the anonymous and
unregistered Red Leaf Society then handed over a package of dried medical
cannabis equivalent to five days' dosage so that the applicant might
receive his medicine immediately instead of waiting for the bureaucracy to
process his forms.

Also announced was the opening to the adult public on Jan. 1, 2002 of the
first Health Canada Designated Grow Location where live strains of Cannabis
Sativa, Cannabis Indica and Sativa crossed with Indica strains will be on
display. The location will also function as North America's first medical
Marijuana Museum and have a ventilated room for licensed users to take
their medicine through a variety of delivery systems, from ingestion to
vapourization. In addition, a mobile Merlin Project bus will travel to
remote locations around Canada to help the ailing with the new licensing
process and provide technical assistance in order that communities can
produce medicine by themselves.

It's certainly a far cry in openness from Health Canada's grow-op in Flin
Flon taking place beneath 375 meters of Canadian Shield. But it's all part
of co-director Michael Maniotis' intention to act as an expression of the
new Health Canada regs on medical cannabis and "to bring people closer to
the plant, so they can get a feeling for it and understand it's quite a
beautiful plant and has a lot of benefits to it....We're hoping this will
be successful across Canada in order to preempt the pharmaceutical
companies from taking control. We've been fighting this for quite a few
decades now and we'll be damned if we'll let them take it from us this time."

It is Maniotis' hope that "If we can organize ourselves within the
regulations maybe Health Canada will say 'okay you're doing a good job'.
Maybe we'll let you assign five licensed users to one licensed grower to
make it easy for you.'"

Pushing a change in the stipulation that a designated grower can only
provide medicine for a single licensed user is crucial as it would result
in a saving of 80 per cent on operating expenses for one designated grow
location.

The local need is obviously great. The Vancouver Persons with AIDS Society,
in dire need of assistance to organize their community for self-reliance,
has approached The Merlin Project organizers.

The directors of the Merlin Project refuse to stand by and watch people
waste away in needless and prolonged suffering. So the Red Leaf Society has
been instrumental in securing a quantity of medical cannabis to be
distributed free of cost to Merlin Project members, mostly Category 1 and 2
patients once their applications are witnessed.

So far the biggest obstacles have been the resistance of some doctors to
condone the use of medical marijuana and the delay and loss of privacy for
designated growers undergoing a routine criminal background check. If there
were a specific person in the Office of Cannabis Medical Access to receive
the background check the procedure would be done in minutes. As it is, a
prospective grower must be fingerprinted and have them sent to Info Source
in Ottawa and wait four to six weeks to receive the printout required for
the application. If all these hoops were legally negotiated a Category 1
patient with a year to live might have only a few months left before he
obtained his dried cannabis.

Theoretically anybody over 18 who hasn't committed a crime in the last ten
years can be a designated grower. And for $2,000, experienced growers of
the Merlin Project will teach eligible candidates all the intricacies of
strain selection, vegetative and flowering cycles and all the other little
tricks that'll bag a crop of organic grade medical cannabis for free
distribution to a needy soul.

I couldn't help but think that this guy spoke the truth and it was time to
put my whisper-thin credibility on the line. Me me me. Let the Evil Brain
plant the evil grain. Let I the blameless lamb crop out and give it away,
give it away, give it away now. Let me put my personal chisel to the dam of
prohibition.

For more information call 604 662 8411 or see their website at
http://www.themerlinproject.com/