COPING WITH THE PAIN

Health Reporter Heather Rivers speaks with the president of the
Canadian Medical Marijuana Association and discovers why he doesn't
see anything wrong with illegally using marijuana to manage his
chronic pain

WOODSTOCK - One puff and the pain begins to subside.

After inhaling a couple more tokes of the virtually smokeless
marijuana, vaporized through a special machine known as the Volcano,
Mike McGaw said his chronic pain level has been reduced by 75 per cent.

It's something he's tried, and failed, to manage in the past with 500
milligrams of morphine a day.

"It eases my pain," he said. "It controls my muscle spasms and
seizures."

McGaw, 49, has been disabled since 1989, when he said he was forced
into retirement after throwing his back out - while lifting bales at
work and injuring his spine and nerves.

Surgery hasn't help relieve his chronic pain, marked by spasms and a
stabbing pain in his lower back that radiates through his leg making
it feel like it's on fire.

Exhaling slowly, he comments, "I can tolerate it now."

McGaw is the president of the Tillsonburg-based Canadian Medical
Marijuana Association, whose mandate is to promote awareness of
cannabis as a homeopathic medicine. He ingests marijuana four or five
times a day to relieve his pain.

McGaw used to be what is known as an exemptee, a person recognized by
the Canadian government as suffering from "grave and debilitating
diseases" for whom conventional treatments had failed and had gained
the legal right to ingest marijuana for medicinal purposes.

McGaw said when his doctor refused to re-sign the forms for his
exemption, he was forced to inhale marijuana illegally to manage his
symptoms. He believes most doctors in the area are prejudiced against
the use of marijuana for pain relief.

"Eighty per cent (of area doctors) are against it," he
said.

McGaw, who smoked marijuana openly during the interview, isn't afraid
to admit he grows his own weed but quickly adds, "It's not in my house
and not on my property."

Still, it disturbs McGaw and other marijuana advocates that to
effectively manage his pain he has to commit a crime.

"Who is it harming? Where is the victim?" asks Cheryl MacLellan,
co-owner of Hemp Country. "If there is no victim, there ought not to
be a crime."

Those comments may be surprising coming from MacLellan who is a former
Children's Aid Society child protection worker and a former police
officer in the detective's office with the Oxford Community Police
Service.

During her time on the force, MacLellan said she became disillusioned
with what she refers to as "drug wars."

"They were helping no one and did nothing," she said. "Drug use has
only increased. It's much easier for a kid on the street to buy pot
than alcohol."

Back in the 1980s, MacLellan launched her own investigation into the
drug world and came out of it with a dependency on methamphetamines
before committing to "straightening out" and going back to school.

"I quit everything," she said. "Drinking, smoking,
chemicals."

Today, she is a committed member of Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition, an organization whose mandate is "to reduce the multitude
of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on
drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and
addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition."

"Putting people in jail is not a solution for social problems,"
MacLellan said. "Jail only makes it worse. We spend billions on drug
wars and nothing has changed. Organized crime and criminals get richer
from prohibition."

MacLellan refers to a 2002 Senate Committee report that questioned
Canada's policies in regards to medical marijuana and confirmed an
earlier senate committee finding that "the criminalization of cannabis
had no scientific basis."

"Thirty years later, we confirm this conclusion and add that continued
criminalization of cannabis remains unjustified based on scientific
data of the danger it poses," the report read.

The commission surmised that billions of dollars have been sunk into
enforcement "without any greater effect."

"However, use trends remain totally unaffected and the gap . between
law and public compliance continue to widen," it read.

While the commission concluded that cannabis "has not been approved as
medicinal drug in the pharmacological sense" it further stated "we do
not doubt that for some medical conditions and for certain people
cannabis is indeed an effective and useful therapy."

Pot proponents say that marijuana acts as an appetite stimulant,
anti-asthmatic, gastrointestinal sedative, anti-epileptic,
anti-spasmodic, anti-depressant and antibiotic.

It is also used to relieve muscle spasms from multiple sclerosis, the
effects of cancer and HIV, and the severe pain of arthritis.

MacLellan said she often has people in their 50s, 60s and 70s come
into the store inquiring about medical marijuana for dying relatives.

She helps them by printing out applications for medical marijuana, but
it frustrated by the difficulty involved in obtaining the product.

After filling out a 30-page application, patients must get approvals
from their doctors. Those with AIDS or cancer are rubberstamped, while
chronic pain sufferers must first visit a pain specialist.

"Some doctors say no (to approval); they don't believe in it -
especially here because they are very conservative," she said.

MacLellan's pro-marijuana stance was strengthened in 2003 after the
police raided the Toronto Compassion Centre.

The centre provides a safe source of medical marijuana for those who
qualify, and are in need.

MacLellan sent an e-mail to the centre apologizing on behalf of police
officers everywhere.

MacLellan eventually quit the police force after she had an
altercation with a mentally ill patient and suffered neck and shoulder
injuries in June 2006.

Prior to her injury, MacLellan said she was a big supporter of the
program but was not a marijuana smoker.

Now, she is currently in the midst of obtaining her exemptee license
because "cannabis worked for me."

"It helps me with pain and sleep," she said.

One of the main complaints she and McGaw have with the current medical
marijuana system is the quality of the government-regulated marijuana
that sells for $150 an ounce, and, no, it's not covered by a drug plan.

"The street stuff is better than this," she said. "But then you have
to deal with the criminal element."

They also worry the government will cancel the grow permits that
enable some exemptees to grow their own cannabis rather than purchase
it directly.

According to Health Canada, there are currently 2,506 Canadian
enrolled in the Medical Marijuana Program.

They defend the quality of the pesticide- and fungus-free marijuana
they purchase from Prairie Plant Systems Inc., which is grown in an
abandoned mine in Flin Flon, Man.

According to Jean Tessier, chief of media relations for Health Canada,
the THC level of its marijuana is 12.5 per cent compared with the
average THC levels in seized marijuana, which only reaches 10.2 per
cent.

There are plenty of opponents to the legalization of
marijuana.

Dr. M.L.D. Fernando, chief of psychiatry at Woodstock General
Hospital, believes that legal grow permits can easily be abused.

He also said marijuana can cause serious effects in some people,
including paranoid psychosis. It can also negatively affect the sperm
and cause "amotivational syndrome" or a "don't care attitude," he said.

"I'm totally against legalizing marijuana," Fernando said. "It's a
slippery slope to take. It's a stepping stone to cocaine and other
things."