Covert cannabis club aids the sick

Toronto club sells drug illegally, but very carefully

Mike Blanchfield
The Ottawa Citizen

Mike Blanchfield, The Ottawa Citizen / These products are medicinal
forms of cannabis. From the left is a salve, made of oil, beeswax and
cannabis, a tincture, made in an alcohol base, an extract in an olive
oil base, and a marijuana brownie.

Mike Blanchfield, The Ottawa Citizen / Membership in the treatment
club is not made in a person's name, but is based on the number on an
official document, such as a driver's licence. Members must have a
doctor's letter to prove they have an illness.

He swallows his first two pills at 8 a.m., expensive, powerful
blockers to slow the progress of his HIV. At 9 a.m., he pops four new
ones, including an antidepressant. Before bedtime, he takes three
more rounds of antiAIDS pills: at 4 p.m., again in the early evening
before dinner and once more at midnight. Some have names that remind
him of insecticide D14 and 3TC and he's not really sure what
some of them do.

"It's like living on a measuring tape," says James, 52, of Toronto.

"Fifteen months of this chemical assault. The only thing it's akin to
is chemotherapy."

All these pills are perfectly legal, prescribed by his doctor. They
have prolonged his life but not without sideeffects. They stripped
away his appetite and 20 pounds from what was already a lean,
150pound frame. They caused nausea, rashes and insomnia.

Another drug, he says, has made this aggressive therapy bearable. The
marijuana James smokes each day reduces some of the sideeffects. It
improves his appetite and wipes away his depression.

James gets his cannabis from a Toronto club that supplies AIDS
victims. CALM (Cannabis As Legitimate Medicine) opened for business
one month ago in Toronto. It is believed to be the only such covert
club in eastern Canada and one of a handful in the country.

CALM would like to supply cannabis to cancer patients and other people
with serious chronic illness, but it can't advertise its illegal
activities.

CALM operates under a veil of secrecy from an upperfloor office in a
trendy Toronto neighbourhood. It relies on word of mouth through the
Toronto underground scene. So far, mostly AIDS victims have been able
to find it.

Neev Tapiero, the club's founder, realizes there's an even greater
need for the club's services.

"Our ideal customer is someone who has been recently diagnosed with a
condition, finds out that cannabis might help, but doesn't know what
to do in that situation. That's our ideal customer."

The club does have a web site on the Internet (50 visits a day in the
last couple of weeks), and it passes out flyers. He won't say how many
members the club has, just that interest has been growing steadily
since it opened one month ago.

Mr. Tapiero, 25, buys the marijuana himself on the street, inspects it
with a microscope for strength, the presence of mould or pesticides,
and sells it to club members.

He also processes it into easily ingestible forms, including an
oliveoil extract and an alcohol tincture (they sell for $10 a
bottle), brownies ($5 per square) and a beeswax salve ($5 per bottle)
that looks like a lip balm and can be rubbed on a sore part of the
body.

He spent two weeks last winter visiting clubs in the San Francisco Bay
area and was taught how to test for quality and screen for legitimate
members to ensure he isn't being duped by recreational users.

The Toronto club requires a doctor to fill out a form detailing the
patient's condition, which the club verifies by phone. It monitors how
much members buy to make sure it isn't being shared for
nontherapeutic reasons. It charges a $15 signup fee.

In California and Arizona, the medical use of marijuana is now
tolerated after two controversial propositions, which were part of the
ballot of last November's presidential election in those states. A
majority voted in favour of the propositions, which approved the
medical use of marijuana.

Canada doesn't have the same electoral process. Marijuana for
medicinal purposes is illegal in Canada. That's why people like Mr.
Tapiero are anxiously awaiting the outcome of a marijuana trial in
London, Ont. Regardless of the outcome, it will mark the beginning of
a lengthy appeal process that could land in the Supreme Court of
Canada.

Chris Clay, 26, the owner of the London store Hemp Nation, is on trial
for cultivating and trafficking a narcotic. His lawyers are trying to
strike down the criminalization of marijuana on constitutional
grounds. His threeweek trial, which concludes this week, has heard
evidence advocating the therapeutic benefits of marijuana for sick
people.

Mr. Tapiero testified about his club as part of Mr. Clay's case. In a
sworn affidavit, Mr. Tapiero told the court that the club's rules
include steps to ensure its members don't resell drugs from the club.
He also gave the judge a January article from the prestigious New
England Journal of Medicine that endorses the medical use of cannabis.

Mr. Tapiero has a permit from the Ontario government to run a
business. He keeps records and plans to submit a provincial sales tax
payment. He says his operation has sold enough to start charging GST.

He'd like to incorporate the business as a nonprofit organization,
the way the California and Arizona clubs are run, but the law won't
allow that because the club is breaking Canadian law.

He allowed the Citizen to visit his small club on the condition that
its location not be published.

It is a bright but spartan 650 squarefoot corner room, with windows
along two of its freshlypainted yellow walls. A wicker couch sits in
one corner next to a makeshift milkcarton coffee table and Mr.
Tapiero's ghetto blaster, across from a cork bulletin board with
detailed information about the club's rules. A blue curtain cordons
off a desk and work area for Mr. Tapiero and his one volunteer.

This is where Mr. Tapiero sells his wares. He makes barely enough to
pay the rent, about $1,000 a month. Smoking in the club is not
allowed, although if someone needs a lesson in marijuana smoking or
rolling, they will make a quick exception.

No one gets in without an identification card.

To protect confidentiality, there are no names or photos on the club
identification card. Club members are issued a sevendigit number that
matches the first seven digits of a drivers' licence or other piece of
photo ID. Both pieces of ID have to be produced before they are
allowed into the club. Membership records are kept in a secret
location away from the club.

Mr. Tapiero has no formal medical education. He trained as a medic in
the Armed Forces Reserves in Ottawa for three years while he was a
teenager.

He is a recent graduate of Ryerson Polytechnical University's theatre
and fine arts program in Toronto.

A few years ago he was turned on to cannabis during a smoking ceremony
at a native sweat lodge. It was an experience that made him curious
about the plant. He read about how marijuana helps temper the
suffering of AIDS and cancer patients.

Mr. Tapiero decided to track down a Toronto group and offer his
services as a volunteer. There was just one problem. There weren't any
groups like that in Toronto.

Eventually he found out about three organizations in British Columbia:
one in Vancouver, one on Vancouver Island and another in the
province's interior.

A year ago, he decided to open his own Toronto club.

His first purchase was a quarter pound of "midgrade" cannabis. He
won't say how much he paid. "I got an OK deal for some OK medicine,"
he says. "It's legitimate medicine."

His year of preparation sent him to Northern California for two weeks
in December to learn from the pioneers of medicinal marijuana
distribution.

In California alone, cannabis clubs have mushroomed to about 15 since
November's presidential election and the passage of Proposition 215.
(They are among the 50 to 60 estimated to be operating throughout the
U.S.).

That vote, which gave birth to a new state law, leaves clinics with a
quasilegal status; they're legal under state law, but remain highly
criminal under federal statutes. The clubs' success depends on how
they get along with local officials.

The Oakland Cannabis Club is on friendly relations with local
politicians, police and the legal community, all of which meet
regularly as part of a working group to manage the club's operation.

"We have a vice narcotics officer who sits on that and we have a real
good relationship with him along with the rest of the police
department," says the club's founder Jeff Jones. "We've been able to
hammer out an identification card process E once we give a card to one
of our members they pretty much let him go and don't harass him in any
way."

That's a luxury members of the Toronto club don't currently enjoy.

James, who has been living with AIDS since 1989, worries about being
arrested.

Marijuana is nothing new to James. A selfdescribed "old hippie," he
experimented with the drug in the '60s but hadn't tried it for 30
years.

Two years ago, he started using marijuana to help him through AIDS
therapy. Buying it through a club now makes life easier, he says. He
knows he's guaranteed good quality, and he doesn't have to worry about
buying on the streets.

The Oakland clinic has made a big difference in the lives of the 1,100
clients it serves, says Mr. Jones. About twothirds of its members are
AIDS victims, the rest are cancer chemotherapy patients or suffer from
a variety of aliments such as multiple sclerosis or glaucoma.

"This alternative therapy makes a huge difference in their lives,"
says Mr. Jones.

Brenda Rochefort, 41, quit smoking medicinal marijuana recently
because she testified about her use at Mr. Clay's trial last week.
She's been charged twice already, and the strain of tangling with the
justice system was too much for her frail health.

The Milverton, Ont. woman was born with Ehler Danlos Syndrome, a rare
tissue condition that affects almost every part of her body. It has
rendered her bones brittle, her skin as soft as tissue paper, and
leaves her prone to uncontrollable spasms that can lock her muscles in
a tight knots for an entire day. As a child, she had surgery to insert
an iron rod to straighten her spine. Ms. Rochefort is blind in one eye
and has 20 per cent vision in the other.

She used to grow her own personal supply of marijuana in her Milverton
home, a small town in Southwestern Ontario. In 1993, the police raided
her house and arrested her and a friend. Because of her ill health,
her male friend agreed to plead guilty if the charges against her were
dropped. He was sentenced to three months in jail, she says.

In 1995, the police came when she was alone and spent five hours
combing through her house. "I said, 'oh nice, pick on the disabled
blind girl.' "

The Crown agreed to drop the charges after confiscating her
cultivation supplies.

When she was born, the doctors told Ms. Rochefort's parents their
daughter wouldn't live more than a few years. She's outlived
everyone's expectations, including her own, but it hasn't been easy.
In a month, she is to have yet another operation, this time to correct
an intestinal disorder caused by her syndrome.

Smoking a joint a day helped ease muscle spasms, which would strike
without warning. After a few puffs, she found her muscles would relax.

Now, without the marijuana, the spasms are much different.

"For the first couple of hours you're just dying of pain, but (after a
while) you're resolved to the fact," says Ms. Rochefort.

She's too far away from Toronto to take advantage of the buyer's club,
but she thinks it is a good idea. She doesn't see them becoming legal
any time soon.

Mr. Tapiero says he's seen the difference marijuana has made in some
clients. One man, who has multiple sclerosis, hadn't been out of his
apartment for more than an hour at a time.

After eating some of Mr. Tapiero's brownies, he spent six hours in a
park one afternoon and played with his dog from a wheelchair.

"When someone tells me they spent six hours outside their home for the
first time in years, it makes me feel good," he says.

However Mr. Tapiero is worried about the law catching up with him. He
was reluctant to be interviewed and he agonized about having his real
name published.

"The one thing I feel protected by, is what I'm doing is right. There
is no gray area about it," he says.