WHEN MARIJUANA IS THE ONLY SOURCE OF RELIEF

When Georgia Peschel first heard police had raided CALM, a compassion
club in Toronto, her initial panicked reaction was this: "Now where
will my son get his marijuana?"

For the past three years, Peschel and her 17-year-old have made the
hour-long drive into Toronto every two weeks. They would knock on a
darkened Queen St. E. storefront, follow a doorman inside, and buy
$140 worth of marijuana from the people at CALM, or Cannabis As
Living Medicine.

The Newmarket-area, church-going family hardly seem the type to
frequent drug dens. But Storm Peschel - named for his tendency to
"kick up a storm" while in his mother's womb - is no regular kid.

At the age of four, Storm was diagnosed with Multiple Synostosis
Syndrome, an extremely rare genetic disorder that causes his bones to
slowly fuse. Eventually, his vertebrae will meld and his cartilage
will turn hard as bone. Storm doubts he will live past 30.

On a bad night, the pain would cause Storm to scream for hours. When
he was eight, doctors began prescribing him codeine, but the drug
made him groggy, nauseated and unable to go to school. It also made
him depressed.

When Storm was 15, Peschel decided to let her son try marijuana. She
knew this was a startling proposition for a parent to make, but her
doubts went up in smoke with Storm's first toke.

"I felt it lift away," Storm says of the pain that creaks in his
hands and joints. "I (now) live a fairly normal life. I don't
actually feel my bone disease takes anything away anymore."

Since discovering cannabis, Storm has lost 75 pounds from being able
to ride his bike and do other activities, and he improved his marks
to make the honour roll. He says marijuana has given him a life; his
mother says it's given him hope.

But to date, Storm has found just one source for easily accessible,
high-quality cannabis: CALM, a compassion club that sells medical
marijuana to some 3,000 registered members.

But CALM, like the dozens of other compassion clubs across Canada, is
unlicensed and therefore illegal. And at about 3:40 p.m. on March 31,
the club was raided by police and shut down for business.

Compassion clubs know perfectly well they are illegal. But they are
forced to exist, they say, for people like Storm.

"It's a matter of necessity," says lawyer Alan Young, an advocate of
medical marijuana and defender of compassion clubs. "There's a sense
of necessity when you need to break the law in order to achieve a
greater good."

In 2001, in response to a court order, the federal government
introduced the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations (MMAR), which
established guidelines for allowing sick Canadians to possess marijuana.

But for stakeholders of the program, there is still one vital thing
missing when it comes to medical marijuana: reasonable access.

"I think the Medical Marijuana Access Division of Health Canada is
the biggest oxymoron we have in federal government," says Philippe
Lucas, a Victoria city councillor and founder of the Vancouver Island
Compassion Society. He uses marijuana to treat the symptoms of
hepatitis C, which he contracted in Ontario from a tainted blood
transfusion. "It's not about improving access; it's about restricting
access, to the point where we literally force people to break the law
in order to treat their symptoms."

There are two ways of getting marijuana legally, both condemned by
medical cannabis users as grossly flawed. The first is to buy from
Health Canada, which contracts its supply from Saskatchewan's Prairie
Plant Systems. The contract expires in the fall of 2011, and Health
Canada says a "new competitive procurement process" was opened in
April 2009. It is currently evaluating new bids.

But currently, the government grows only one strain of cannabis,
despite research and patient feedback that show different strains
have varying therapeutic effects. Many users also complain the
marijuana is vastly inferior to black market supplies, describing it
as weak, irradiated (repugnant to many medical users) and
inconvenient (orders are currently sent by mail). As of June 2009,
about 20 per cent of the 4,029 licensed Canadians were buying
marijuana from the government.

Health Canada declined to provide an interview for this story but
answered a few questions via email.

The second way to legally obtain marijuana is grow it yourself, or
designate another person to do it for you. This option Young calls a
"slap in the face" - what other patients are required to grow their
own medication, he asks?

"Pretty much the day the MMAR was proclaimed into force was the day I
knew it was defective," Young says. "The routes for access to
medicine were so limited that we argued they were constitutionally deficient."

And the courts have largely agreed. According to Young, the
government has lost as many as six court challenges related to
medical marijuana, each time a judge deeming the system unconstitutional.

"It's insulting and it's irrational," says Lucas. "If this was any
other program but medical marijuana, there would be an incredible
uproar right now. This would be a government scandal of the highest order."

Young criticizes the government for only improving the program
reflexively when forced by the courts. And even when changes are
made, they are often minimal; in 2003, Young successfully challenged
an MMAR restriction that forbade pot growers from supplying to more
than one user. A federal court deemed this "one-to-one" restriction
unconstitutional and ordered Health Canada to expand it. Health
Canada did, just barely, to two-to-one.

"If you don't tell me that's the ultimate disrespect and contempt to
me, to patients and to the court, I don't know what is," Young says.

Compassion club owners say they're simply doing what Health Canada won't.

"We bridge the gap between regulation and reality," says CALM owner
Neev Tapiero. "I knew I was helping people and I was quite confidant
a jury trial would never convict me."

Tapiero started CALM in 1996 and moved it to its current location in
2004. The club's exterior is unmarked, its windows blackened, but
inside, CALM has all the trappings of a clinic: waiting room,
pamphlets, customer kiosks with scales and hand sanitizer. CALM rules
say all members must be licensed or have doctor's notes confirming
their condition.

But the shadowy nature of compassion clubs can invite skepticism
about their true motivations, and certainly some of them are shady.
Prominent AIDS activist Jim Wakeford, the first Canadian granted
federal exemption for marijuana possession, has accused compassion
clubs of profiting off sick people by selling at black market prices
(most clubs charge between $6 to $12 per gram; Health Canada charges $5).

Tapiero insists CALM steers clear of organized crime and also
inspects its marijuana with a microscope. As for the prices, Tapiero
says they're regrettably high, but he has four employees, legal fees,
rental payments and a two-year-old son to provide for. He declined to
disclose his earnings but says he pays taxes.

Police contend compassion clubs are definitely making profits and
that when CALM was raided, cops seized three bags of cash and some
18,700 grams of marijuana and hashish, with a total estimated street
value of more than $200,000. (Tapiero says quantities were
exaggerated by police.) Tapiero was arrested, along with eight CALM
employees and volunteers, and all are now facing drug trafficking charges.

The raid was captured by CALM's security cameras, however, and the
club has since posted the video online, prompting outrage from
members and supporters.

"It's a public relations nightmare," Young says. "The officer who
decided imprudently to raid the club did not know the bigger picture,
and I'm assuming he must regret his decision because you can't win."

Detective Jim Brons, who conducted the raid, admits he was unaware of
the legal context swirling around medical cannabis prior to making
the arrests. He also recently learned of the club's existence after
transferring to 51 Division last summer.

Brons sympathizes with patients who rely on CALM, but says that as a
police officer, he simply couldn't ignore the "numerous" community
complaints being made about the club.

"Nobody really wants to engage a compassionate centre in an
investigation," he says. "But they cannot supersede the laws."

The detective does concede the issue is ambiguous, however, and that
he'd like to see clarification from higher-ups.

"Give us some guidelines because right now, there are no guidelines
for the Toronto police in relation to compassionate centres," he
says. "I think that's why they haven't been enforced."

If history is any indication, the CALM arrests are unlikely to result
in convictions. In 2002, the Toronto Compassion Centre was raided but
all the drug-related charges were dropped 17 months later. The
federal justice department said proceeding with a prosecution would
be against the public interest.

Tapiero's lawyer, Ron Marzel, is confident CALM's charges will
similarly disappear.

Tapiero has no doubt compassion clubs are here to stay, though he has
little faith the government will change the system anytime soon.

But changes are afoot, according to Health Canada. In an email to the
Star, a spokesperson said the government is considering "longer-term
measures" to revise the medical marijuana program, focusing on "key
areas" such as reasonable access. Public safety and security and
overall costs to the government are also being evaluated.

Alan Young has a tiny spark of hope. In December, for the first time
ever, he secured a meeting with Health Canada officials to discuss
improving the program. He will meet with them again on Monday.

"It may be that the tide is turning and Health Canada will try to fix
the problem," he says, cautiously optimistic. "I think they know
they're vulnerable. They've played their hand too far now."

Young is proposing that Health Canada end its monopoly on marijuana
production and start regulating the private sector. He already has a
person in mind for Canada's first supplier of medical marijuana: Sam
Mellace, a former Torontonian now living near Vancouver.

Mellace was once connected with CALM but the relationship dissolved
over personal differences with Tapiero. He is now critical of
compassion clubs but says he shares the same goal: to bring
accessible and affordable marijuana to sick Canadians.

He suffers from chronic pain himself and has one of the biggest
licences in Canada, permitting him to grow nearly 300 plants. Because
of the scale of his grow-op, Mellace thinks his company, New Age
Medical Solutions, is ready to start legally producing on an
industrial scale for no more than $5 a gram. He is also developing
alternatives to smoking cannabis, such as creams and butters.

Health Canada killed a 2006 pilot project to examine marijuana
distribution through pharmacies, citing provincial and territorial
barriers, but Mellace envisions a future where clinics can prescribe
medical marijuana and patients can buy their dosages at Shoppers Drug Mart.

Such a future would certainly the Peschels' lives easier. But for
now, the reality is that Georgia will continue buying marijuana for
Storm any way she can.

"I will do whatever it takes to take away my son's pain," she says
fiercely. "If it means I have to go downtown and try and find someone
to buy drugs off of, I would do it.

"Tell me any mother who wouldn't."