PIONEERS OF COMPASSION

If you were to peek through the window of the Compassion Club's
Vancouver building space, you might think that you were looking at the
reception area of a hip, young doctor's office: a smiling receptionist
greets clients as they walk through the doors; the waiting area is
painted a bright yellow and is filled with enough plants to start up a
small greenhouse; some soothing Sarah McLaughlin tunes blend in with
the faint sound of clients' chatter.

Then you walk into the club and the smell hits you. It's a smell that
would bring a smile to the face of any hippie-at-heart. Welcome to the
Compassion Club, Canada's largest medical marijuana buyers club.

The Compassion Club is a non-profit organization that provides its
members with, "clean cannabis [and] natural therapies in a safe,
healing environment." It was founded in 1997 by Hilary Black, a young
woman who first took on the project while working at Hemp B.C. - a
Vancouver retail hemp store. At the time, Black was being flogged with
requests for medical marijuana by customers suffering from ailments
ranging from AIDS to multiple sclerosis.

"There was this little old lady that kept phoning and she really
wanted to try pot," Black recalls. "She had really bad arthritis. I
went over to her house and she was the first person that I ever sold
pot to...We rolled a joint, she smoked it, and she got out of bed for
the first time in three weeks."

Soon afterwards, Black and a friend set up a small delivery system
that catered to approximately 50 people in need of medical marijuana.
Three years later, the club is serving approximately 1200 members.

While there is no "typical" member, everyone has to go through the
same channels to become part of the club. Potential members have their
physicians sign a form that recognizes their particular medical
ailment. And while a physician may or may not choose to "prescribe"
marijuana, the club will grant membership based on this signed
diagnosis. Once they've paid their annual $15 membership fee, members
are free to use the club's various services. The fees, along with a 30
per cent mark-up on the marijuana, cover the club's overhead.

Obviously, the selling of cannabis and other related products is a
central component of the club's operation. The club's distribution
set-up is something of a cross between a doctor's office and a private
deli; members come to the Compassion Club's building space where they
show their membership card to the receptionist and then take a number
to join the queue. While waiting to be served, members might check out
the menu that lists the various strains of marijuana that are
available on that particular day. When their number is called, members
make their way to the "distribution area," a curtained-off section of
the club, where they can discuss their purchase with the staff. The
staff record each purchase so they can track what strains are helping
what members with what symptoms. After buying their herb, members
might head to the "smoking lounge" where they are free to puff at
their pleasure. In this case, it means they are virtually guaranteed
not to be hassled by local police.

"The Vancouver Police [have] said, 'We have bigger fish to fry... as
long as you're not a capitalist organization, you're focused on the
medical aspects, and you're not selling pot to children, we're not
going to charge you.' And that's pretty much the same line they've
given ever since," says Black.

While the local police have adopted a somewhat complacent attitude
towards the Compassion Club, the medical establishment has not
remained uncritical of the notion of medical marijuana. Some doctors
have argued that using cannabis may promote dependency, short-term
memory loss, and most importantly, that it has not been scientifically
proven to do anything for medical patients.

In response, Black points out that most research involving marijuana
has been conducted with the intent of proving its harmfulness, rather
than its helpfulness. On the other hand, she acknowledges that
cannabis provides "mostly symptomatic relief - it's not a cure."

This is not to say, however, that the Compassion Club's job is done
once the cannabis has been distributed. The club is equally committed
to promoting the use of natural therapies and a "holisitic approach to
healing and living." Members are able to access various natural
therapies through the club's "Wellness Center" which provides services
ranging from acupuncture, to nutritional counselling, to herbology.

"When people are using all those other [Wellness Center] services, you
can start dealing with things at a much deeper level," says Black,
"You've got viral loads that are dropping, livers that are rebuiliding
themselves, tumours that are shrinking. Those fundamental, curative
things are coming more from the Wellness Center than from the cannabis."

Alternative health care certainly isn't a novel idea, especially for
the newly yoga-inspired yuppie class, but the Compassion Club's
dedication to providing such services for free is definitely worth
highlighting.

"People can't believe that they can get free alternative health care,"
says Black, "Poverty is a rampant issue with our members. When you get
sick, you lose your job and you're dependent on whatever the
government gives you - and they don't give you enough money to live
off of healthily, and to be able to see all these different
practitioners."

The Wellness Center practitioners make up more than half of the
23-member staff at the Compassion Club. Like everyone else, they earn
$12 per hour. This attempt at non-hierarchy is reinforced by the fact
that the club runs on a consensus basis. While Hilary Black is the
club's founder, general spokesperson, and designated bureaucrat, she
stresses that she is not the boss. Rather, decisions are collectively
reached at weekly staff meetings and monthly members' meetings. The
atypical organization of the club should perhaps not come as a
surprise seeing as the entire basis of the club is rooted in upsetting
the status quo.

"I think that one of the most important things about the club is the
role of civil disobediance in creating social change," says Black, "I
think it's really important for people to be trained and prepared to
be civilly disobedient on issues that they really believe in, because
the government has proven that its channels are ineffective. It seems
to be that the only way to change unjust laws is to break them."

The Canadian government's handling of medical marijuana legislation
appears to illustrate Black's point. In the Spring of 1999, a Bloc
Quebecois MP first proposed that the federal government take steps
towards legalizing the drug for certain health patients. Overall, the
response towards the motion was positive and it appeared as though
Canada's longstanding drug laws might have been overturned.

As it turns out, the move towards legalization is currently caught up
in a complex web of bureaucracy. At this time, the government is still
trying to find a legitimate, private supplier who would provide
cannabis during a series of five-year clinical trials. In the
meantime, various ill Canadians are making special applications to
Health Minister Alan Rock in the hope that they will be exempted from
prosecution should they be found in possession of marijuana. Last
year, Toronto's Jim Wakeford became one of the first people in Canada
to receive such an exemption. Since that time, close to 40 other
Canadians have also been accorded this special status.

For marijuana advocates, the Wakeford case presents a somewhat twisted
legal precedent. While possession of cannabis has been legalized for a
handful of people, these people have no legal means of acquiring the
drug - it is still against the law for others to grow and sell pot.
This glitch in the government's plan has not gone unnoticed by either
users or the legal establishment. Jim Wakeford eventually took the
federal government to court and demanded that they supply him with
clean cannabis. He claimed that it was unsafe for him to acquire the
drug through the black market and that the government had forfeited
his supply when they charged two of his caregivers for growing marijuana.

In the case of the Compassion Club, the Vancouver police have stuck to
their initial laissez-faire attitude towards the main organization.
The club's growers and "middle-men," however, have not been exempt
from prosecution. In a sentence handed out earlier this year, a
wholesaler for the club was given six months probation after being
found with three kilograms of cannabis. Yet in his sentencing, Judge
J.B. Paradis noted the tacit acceptance of the Compassion Club and
then stated that "Marijuana will not fall into [the club's] hands as
manna from heaven. It must be obtained either directly from growers,
as is now the case, or through a middleman." More recently, a B.C.
Supreme Court Judge granted an absolute discharge to Bill Small,
another Compassion Club supplier. An absolute discharge is the least
sentence available under the Criminal Code of Canada, and it means
that Small's criminal record will be wiped clean after one year. In
his ruling, Judge Wong told Small that, "I am satisfied that your
motives were humane and altruistic."

The Compassion Club's frequent appearances in court, and the very
nature of their business mean that the club inevitably takes on the
role of an activist organization. On the other hand, the day-to-day
activities of the club revolve around providing people with a source
of pot and a safe place to smoke it. Black seems to describe it all as
a sort of precarious balancing act: "Some days are about sitting down
and talking with someone who is having a really horrible day - who is
talking about killing themselves, and who is talking about their
incredibly abusive, nasty partner and all this intense, hideous shit.
And then you get a phone call from your lawyer that says ... you've
got to be on the stand in two hours. When you finally get back, you
switch into another gear."

The social support system that Black describes comprises a major part
of the organization. Black acknowledges that some members need
emotional support more than anything else and that most are able to
find it in both the club's staff and their fellow members. People like
Bob Hinchliffe credit the club with saving him from suicide.
Hinchliffe has been coming to the Compassion Club for the past three
years since he fell and shattered his ankle.

'The biggest thing [about the club] is the unconditional love," says
Hinchliffe. "The way the club works for me, is that it is a place
where there's no ego."

Hinchliffe says that it was important for him to get away from street
dealers who would inevitably push him to buy other drugs when he came
to buy his cannabis. He credits the club for providing him with a
safe, organic supply of marijuana and also for the services of the
Wellness Centre. Still, Hinchliffe's main praise for the club comes
from the role it has played in his emotional life.

"[The club] is like an oasis in the desert ... it's a place where you
can come and trust people," says Hinchliffe. "You buy one gram at a
time, just so you can come back here again."

At this point, it looks like Bob Hinchliffe and the thousand-or-so
other members of the Compassion Club will be coming back to the club
for a long while. And they'll continue to push the boundaries of the
law - one gram at a time.