MEDICAL-MARIJUANA 101: MALASPINA GOES TO POT

Hmm, got some time to spare and a yearn to learn, let's see what they're
offering at Malaspina's continuing education department: Creative drawing,
darkroom photography, Microsoft PowerPoint, pruning ornamental shrubs,
medical marijuana ...

What? This can't be for real. I mean, who would want to learn how to prune
ornamental shrubs?

But the medical-marijuana course, it hardly raised an eyebrow after they
added it to the list at the university-college's Cowichan campus this fall.
It's a one-day seminar, to be taught by Eric Nash, the Duncan man who,
along with wife Wendy Little, recently earned organic certification for the
pot they grow. Read all about it on their 200-page Web site,
medicalmarihuana.ca.

Cyberpot? Organically grown dope? Schools that teach Marijuana for
Beginners? This, of course, confirms everything the rest of Canada ever
thought about B.C., where the streets are lined with lava lamps and the
national anthem has been replaced by Tommy James and the Shondells singing
Crimson and Clover.

Yes, well, we're used to the stereotype. What's newer, though, is the shift
in opinions, legal and public, that allowed Malaspina to take the phrase
"higher learning" so literally.

Teaching dope-growing used to earn you 10 years, not tenure.

Not that Nash's Nov. 15 course is really about running a grow show. The
focus is on negotiating Canada's medical marijuana laws, a how-to guide to
applying for the right smoke legally.

Still, the existence of any marijuana-related course is something that only
recently would have been contemplated. Malaspina's Janet Germann says the
idea was greeted with rumbles of reservation -- "It was almost pulled out
of the brochure" -- but won public praise after being allowed to proceed.

Nash recognizes the change. "Every few days I turn to Wendy and say, 'A few
years ago, who would have thought that we would be doing this?' "

"This" is not just the Malaspina course, but the Web site and the pot they
grow with Health Canada's blessing.

It began in 2001, the year Ottawa reluctantly introduced rules that would
allow access to medical marijuana. The feds, uncertain about the medical
benefits and worried about back-door legalization for recreational users,
didn't want to make things easy. Wendy's dad, suffering from advanced
Parkinson's disease, found the process difficult. Eric, a Web designer,
researched the regulations and posted his findings on the Internet. "Then
the site just started getting traffic," says Nash.

Pretty soon Wendy and Eric had each volunteered to produce pot for one
smoker, as allowed under the law. Most of the 642 Canadians licensed to
have medical marijuana grow it themselves, but 58 people designate others
to do it for them.

Nash and Little jumped through the hoops to make it all legal, liaising
with the RCMP, submitting to criminal record checks. Canada is dotted with
self-described medical-marijuana organizations that push the boundaries of
the law by dispensing the drug to thousands of unlicensed users, but Nash
says he and Wendy go strictly by the book.

"Every gram is accounted for. Every crop is accounted for." They also got
that organic certification by adhering to rules governing everything from
the soil to the paint on the walls.

Eric's licence allows him to grow 15 plants at a time; Wendy may grow 25,
the amount needed to supply her patient with the physician-prescribed five
grams a day. There's no money in it, Nash says. The $100 they charge for an
ounce of certified organic pot just covers costs, he says, adding wistfully
that he wishes it could be done more profitably.

Ah, but maybe it can. An Ontario court ruling has been interpreted as
stating that designated growers can produce pot for as many licensed
smokers as they want, so applications are in the works for Eric and Wendy
to grow for another half dozen patients. Health Canada, however, says the
one-grower, one-patient rule remains.

Nash distances himself from any suggestion that his is some sort of
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers operation. "We're just basic people," he
says, university grads in their 40s, out to help ailing folk who want
medical marijuana. "They don't want to be going into a head shop to buy a
pipe, and they don't want to be going down to East Hastings to buy some
weed." (The government distributed some of its own dope this summer, but
the product was roundly criticized as being too weak and hard on the throat.)

Hence the Malaspina seminar, for which about 10 people have signed up. It
will mostly deal with negotiating the bureaucracy, but will also involve
plant selection. (The pain-relieving indica strain is better for conditions
like multiple sclerosis, Nash says, while the sativa variety is more of a
stimulant, something that may increase the appetite of someone with cancer
or AIDS.)

Rudimentary growing will also be taught. "We're not going to get into the
technical details of hydroponics and that sort of thing. It's basically how
to throw a seed in a pot and get good results."

Not the sort of thing you would have expected to hear a few years ago, and
not, perhaps, something we will hear in the future. Canada's new health
minister, Anne McLellan, has made it clear that she is not in love with the
whole concept of medical marijuana, which she says has no basis in science.
Don't expect it to remain legal if studies don't prove it to have
therapeutic value.

But medical marijuana is legal right now, so Malaspina is happy to have the
subject taught as part of its Healthy Outlooks program.

"We're going to offer it again next spring," says Germann, the
administrative co-ordinator of the continuing education department. "It's a
sign of the times, isn't it?