LEGAL GREEN ZONE

Unravelling the Complications of Growing Medical Marijuana

Through the Health Canada program, Bilodeau officially supplies three
patients with marijuana for medical relief - which he grows for them
absolutely free of charge. Off the books to support the costs of
growing, he sells his surplus to the Montreal Compassion Club, where
he also works as a manager. The club dispenses medical marijuana to
members who demonstrate a legitimate medical need, but haven't got a
doctor's prescription and aren't part of the government program.

"One of the ways to get quality marijuana in the Compassion Centre is
relying on surpluses from people that have legal Health Canada
permits. That part is still considered illegal, but we're fighting
strong because we believe there is no sense in throwing the cannabis
away," asserts Bilodeau.

Whether you are growing for yourself or for someone else with a
medical need, the government limits the number of plants and grams of
pot allowed. "There are ways to stay within your limits and still have
surplus," Bilodeau points out. "There is no true value to a number of
plants because you can have a super big plant or you can make many
small plants. If the person is allowed 300 grams a month, you can
produce 600 grams a month; you produce 300 grams every two weeks,
which is never really illegal because you're allowed to have 300 grams."

The legal situation around medical marijuana is about as sticky as
sticky green weed-even law enforcement officials find it baffling.
The recent history of its partial legalization has been a chain
reaction of reluctant allowances, which have resulted in unequal
access and inconsistent risks, leaving many in a legal grey zone.
Under the current system, Bilodeau explains that different doctors'
perceptions of marijuana use make it completely legal for some while
it remains restricted for others. Permission for medical cannabis is
granted on an individual basis; to buy it from the government through
the Health Canada program, a patient's doctor needs to sign off. To
apply for a permit to grow, you also need a patient with a doctor's
signature. "Right off the bat, nine out of 10 doctors won't sign the
forms because they want nothing to do with marijuana - to them it's
something that's evil," Bilodeau says.

That's where the compassion clubs come in. "[The Montreal Compassion
Club's] mission when we started in 1999 was to facilitate access to
people who need it but who don't have access to it legally," said
Bilodeau. Over the past decade and a half, dozens of similar
non-profit community-based initiatives have opened across Canada.

In spite of these clubs' efforts, Bilodeau notes that the demand for
medical marijuana still exceeds the supply. Over 90 per cent of
Canadians who use medical marijuana buy it from compassion clubs,
according to the CBC. A Canadian AIDS Society report found that less
than two per cent of medical users get their supply through the
government program.

Many medical users resort to buying on the street. They have to break
the law while stomaching higher prices and inconsistent quality.
"It's expensive, when you think of the black market, to get $10 of
weed which is probably schwag and they don't know what it is. Ten
bucks a day; that's like $3,000 or $4000 a year," explains Bilodeau.

The current system leaves growers without Health Canada permits
especially vulnerable.

"A lot of [the compassion centres'] growers... produce only for
medical use but they don't have the permits to protect themselves, so
they're the most at risk in the whole operation," explains Bilodeau.
"At the club where we dispense the marijuana...we've already gone to
court and proven there is a medical demand for marijuana: we have that
protecting us. And then the members, on an individual level, they have
the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that permits them to use marijuana
for medical use."

The complicated genealogy of these protections begins in 1996 when
Terry Parker, an epileptic man who used marijuana to control his
seizures, was arrested for possession. The next year, the judge ruled
that the "security of a person" in the Canadian charter defended
Parker's right to smoke pot. "People were allowed to possess
[marijuana] but weren't allowed to buy it, so the government was not
offering the actual medicine that it was allowing," explains Bilodeau.

Across Canada, compassion clubs cropped up to provide a product to
which the government had recognized sick Canadians had an inherent
right but still refused to supply.

The first clubs opened in Victoria, Vancouver, and Toronto in
1996.

A year after opening, the Montreal Club was busted in 2000 -
nationwide, clubs were being taken to court around the same time.
After a long-winded procedure, charges against the Montreal club were
dismissed in 2002 and the club reopened.

The judge ruled that people who use the drug as medicine need a safe
and legal place to acquire it. The laws that got them in trouble in
the first place, though, haven't changed.

The complications posed by the compassion clubs made it clear that the
government needed to define on what terms medical marijuana was legal
and how it would be supplied. In 2001, the Medical Marijuana Access
Regulations were created, which lists the conditions and symptoms that
warrant access to marijuana - weight loss and nausea from cancer,
severe pain from arthritis, and muscle spasms from multiple sclerosis
all appear on the list. But it wasn't until two years later that the
government finally supplied the drug, in the form of either dried weed
or seeds, to authorized users.

Medical users have to pay for government pot out of their own
pocket.

"The marijuana that the government offers is only one type of cannabis
that works on one type of symptoms," says Bilodeau. "It's a really
basic sativa strain.

If it doesn't work for you then you're pretty much screwed," Bilodeau
says. Compassion clubs offer their members a variety of strains - the
main argument for their continued existence in spite of the government
program.

Before working at the club, Bilodeau, like most of us, thought, "You
get stoned, you get stoned." But he explains that there are different
strains of cannabis that have different effects on the body: "Some
people have arthritis; other people have nausea from chemo for cancer,
and they don't want to use the same type of cannabis." The main
distinction is that sativa strains provide more of an energetic and
cerebral high while indicia strains provide more of a sleepy, whole
body high. Bilodeau grows three different strains for his patients.

"We are creating the standard [for medical marijuana] with the
compassion centres.

It's up to us to make something better because the government is not
helping," says Bilodeau, explaining that right now, there are no
inspections or standards on medical pot or grow-ops.

"We're working on opening a co-op of growers," explains Bilodeau.
"We'd inspect growops and set a medical standard for growing
marijuana. A grower would have to make sure he uses only natural
products, no pesticides."

For some people, marijuana is the only medicine that
works.

It has fewer side effects than many prescription medications, and it
complements a more holistic view of health. "People don't see it as a
burden.

It's therapeutic for people to have a ritual, to roll their joint, to
have fun with their medication," says Bilodeau.

Before prohibition in the '30s and '40s, cannabis- and opiate-based
medicine was common - parents even gave it to their children. "We've
forgotten it was once legal, we've been living for so long in this
prohibition," says Bilodeau, adding that often people say, "'We used
[marijuana] to have fun; we didn't even think of it as being medical.'
Then you speak to their parents or grandparents and they used to use
it medically."

The medical industry's profit motives have played a role in the
cultural shift toward synthetic medicines. "The only way to get a
patent on a product is if you can synthesize the molecule. Obviously,
you can't synthesize a plant. Since God created it, no one can own
it," says Bilodeau. "That was a big threat for pharmaceutical
companies." Case in point, the medical ingredient in marijuana,
tetrahydrocannabinol, has been synthetically created and patented -
it's sold as Dronabinol or Marinol, which costs hundreds of dollars
per month to use. Imagine the loss for these companies if the people
using their product could just grow the same thing in their backyard.

Pharmaceutical companies aren't the only ones threatened by cannabis,
Bilodeau explains: "Marijuana comes from the same plant as hemp. Hemp
was pushed to be illegal, which was really absurd because there's no
psychoactive value.

But it was a big threat to the oil companies because from hemp fibres
you can make clothing; the first Ford car was made with hemp plastics."

In February 1937, Popular Mechanics Magazine predicted that hemp would
be the world's first "Billion Dollar Crop" that would support
thousands of jobs and provide a vast array of consumer products, from
dynamite to plastics.

The same year, the United States passed legislation that levied a tax
and added regulation to anyone who dealt commercially with hemp or
marijuana.

Also that year, DuPont Plastics received two patents that allowed them
to replace hemp plastics with synthetic varieties.

The proponents of this legislation preyed on existing prejudices.
Bilodeau explains that they would associate marijuana with black and
Mexican Americans, saying that it drove these racial groups to crime
and violence.

He points the "the whole Reefer Madness-syndrome," noting the 1936
propaganda film.

The war on drugs is still a big business.

The Harper government's Bill C-15 reminds us that laws and regulations
on drugs rarely lead to harm reduction or ensure public safety.

The bill proposed a mandatory minimum sentence of six months for any
drug-related charge, even for the possession of one cannabis plant.

It targeted marijuana more than hard drugs, and drug production rather
than distribution. In short, it targeted people who grow pot, rather
than the gangs who deal it.

"I have trouble trying to find the logic behind the Harper
government," says Bilodeau. He speculates that Harper plans to
privatize prisons, creating a system where the more people there are
in jail, the more the government profits.

A silver-lining to Parliament's proroguement, however, is that Bill
C-15 was dropped. Bilodeau hopes that the momentum behind medical
marijuana will ensure it won't be brought to the floor again: "There
are so many permits being issued every day; there's so many more clubs
opening up across Canada that are selling marijuana. And every day
that we're open there's new members.
The cause becomes bigger and the fight is harder for them to
win."

Bilodeau has no doubts that the legalization of medical marijuana will
lead to the drug's full legalization: "Marijuana is marijuana, whether
it's medical marijuana or recreational marijuana. It's the same God
damn plant."

Even though in many ways it's the same fight against prohibition,
Bilodeau regrets that some people see medical marijuana as just an
excuse to legalize recreational marijuana.

There's a new club that just opened up in Lachine, the 420 Club. "Just
in their name, they seem to be taking a different approach," notes
Bilodeau. He warns that they might face trouble with the law because
patients' illnesses are never verified - a sworn declaration is all
one needs to provide in order to walk out with pot.

Outside of Canada, there are indications that prohibition is on its
way out. President Barack Obama has relaxed the enforcement of medical
marijuana and stopped federal raids of medical marijuana dispensaries
in California. These dispensaries are legal under the state's laws but
not permitted by federal regulations.

Unfortunately, there are international pressures to reign in Canada's
growing tolerance toward pot. A U.N. watchdog is currently reviewing
the national medical marijuana program, and the Vienna-based
International Narcotics Control Board has suggested that it violates
international treaty rules.

Despite the pressure to uphold zero tolerance policies, Quebec is in
the position to play a leading role in cannabis legalization within
Canada. Bilodeau notes that our province's unique Charter of Rights
could be useful in promoting legalization across the nation.

The Quebec Charter bars the discrimination against the use of any
means to palliate a handicap and takes the onus off of individuals to
prove their sickness if they are using marijuana medically. "We are
trying to push our own Charter here. And if we legalize it here, then
it will create a domino effect across Canada," he predicts.

"This is my life, my business, and what I'm truly going to be doing
for the rest of my life," says Bilodeau. When it comes to the future
of medical marijuana in Canada, he's optimistic: "It's not absurd to
think that one day I'll be able to declare everything that I do and be
totally open about it."