NORFOLK MAN SUPPLYING MEDICAL MARIJUANA

From the outside, the farm looks like any other in the tobacco
belt.

The side windows on the old-style wooden kilns are open. This year's
crop is visible, hanging upside down and turning yellow.

The only clue that something is amiss is the greenhouse, its contents
hidden by plastic sheets put up on the inside.

A man wearing a ball cap emerges from the back door carrying a large
stick at his side and holds back a pit bull on a chain.

He is guarding a $1 million crop that has been growing behind the
plastic for weeks: marijuana.

What's happening inside is not illegal; the grower, a Delhi man who
rents the greenhouse from the farmer, is licensed by Health Canada to
supply the plant's byproducts to the sick, who in turn must be signed
on by their doctor.

"We get bigger and bigger every week," says Richard West, who boasts
he's been growing pot since age 11 and insists he's one of the world's
foremost growers. "The outcry for this is insane."

West supplies marijuana to people with a wide variety of ailments,
such as arthritis, cancer, multiple sclerosis and Tourette Syndrome.

The problem, he says, is that the chronically ill suffer debilitating
side-effects from years of taking traditional drugs such as steroids.
The cure becomes as bad as the disease.

Marijuana eases their pain, increases their appetite or stops their
muscle spasms without the side-effects. West, 48, says he gives the
sick their lives back again.

More and more people are turning to him for help, he says, and he
intends to expand his operation in Norfolk -also offering a lifeline
to desperate farmers who face losing their status as a legal farm if
they can't find a crop to replace tobacco.

The problem is that earlier this summer he ran afoul of the law. About
a month ago, police showed up to the greenhouse he rents in the west
end of Norfolk County with a search warrant and raided the premises.

Norfolk OPP Const. Mark Foster says West's licence allows him to grow
only a certain number of plants. Police, says Foster, left with some
of his plants but have yet to lay any charges.

"It's still up for discussion," says Foster. "Charges are still
pending."

West counters that he is allowed to grow over his quota to take
account for some plants that won't flower and never got the chance to
do a "cull" before police showed up.

In the meantime, he says, the raid, which saw police cars parked in
front of the farm for four or five hours, has brought his operation to
the public's attention and made his life hell: everybody now knows
what he's doing in the greenhouse and attempts to steal from him have
gone up.

West says he has had to step up security at his greenhouse and has had
violent clashes with people sneaking up on his operation in the dark.

"The best way to fight this is send some home dog-bitten and beaten
up," says West, who sleeps inside the greenhouse with his guard and
two dogs, the pit bull and a Doberman.

Since the raid, he says he has added a $15,000 alarm system while his
dogs have been let loose on intruders 11 times.

He points to notches on the large stick his guard carries and says
each one represents a broken bone given in a confrontation with a trespasser.

West, a father and grandfather, acknowledges he has been convicted
eight times on drug charges, but that was a long time ago, he says,
and he has changed.

What he's interested in now, he says, is using his knowledge to help
people and to potentially create a local industry.

West is one of 3,245 people in Canada licensed to produce medical
marijuana. They supply 4,475 sick people who are authorized to possess
dried marijuana.

His expansion plans include, he says, the building of a research
centre outside Walsingham that will house two scientists plus other
staff.

The idea is to come up with better ways to ingest the
plant.

Marijuana can be eaten, put into cookies or brownies, put in pill form
or drops, or used as strips you put on the tongue.

"We recommend you not smoke it," says West, who suffers from arthritis
and also uses marijuana for medical purposes. "You can make it into
butter and cook with it. That's what we recommend."