'STILL TREATED AS CRIMINALS'

Medical Marijuana Growers Face Obstacles, While Police Still See
Issues

The walls are bright white and patched with red construction tape.
Fluorescent lights -- mimicking sunlight -- shine down on 20 flowering
plants of varying strains.

Two giant pails of water being aerated fill the room with a low hum,
as Jason Hiltz stands above rows of flowering herbs in the converted
garage greenhouse.

There, just off the main drag in a small town outside Saskatoon, sits
one of 94 legal medical marijuana grow operations in the province and
one of the many Hiltz helped get off the ground.

It's unsophisticated, but it works, he said.

"This has a few glossy spots," Hiltz tells James Francis, 52, who says
he's the longest licensed user of medical marijuana in Canada.

"When did you last water?"

Hiltz, a horticulturist and Saskatchewan's best known pot advocate, is
Francis' cannabis consultant, helping him and 12 other local medical
marijuana growers cultivate their crops.

Hiltz, who is also a licensed user after a car crash left him with
chronic pain, helps everyone from family friends to elderly people on
their death beds access medicinal marijuana and advises a number of
growers on how to wind through Health Canada's bureaucratic morass.

"It's about compassion," Hiltz says. "Honestly, it's probably easier
being an illegal grower than a legal grower."

More research is supporting previous anecdotal evidence that cannabis
may have a wide range of therapeutic uses, such as the treatment of
Alzheimer's, depression, glaucoma, epilepsy, cancer, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.

However, the medical growers in the Saskatoon area say the
government's program has artificially depressed the medical market by
making it difficult for patients to qualify, supplying what many
consider poor-quality marijuana and restricting qualified licensed
growers to supplying a maximum of two patients.

Growers say they live in fear of break-ins, some say they're
discriminated against by police who still view their grow-ops with an
air of suspicion and struggle against the insurance industry, which
wants absolutely nothing to do with the risks.

"We're still treated as criminals," says Jeff Lundstrom, the owner of
Skunk Funk, a head shop that he says has become the local headquarters
for the medical marijuana community.

Lundstrom, who is authorized to grow for two users under the federal
program, had his garage-based grow room broken into over winter.
Someone caught wind of the operation, drove a vehicle through his
garage and made off with two plants he was pollenizing. The legal
operation wasn't covered by insurance and he was forced to pay for the
repairs -- the thieves were never caught.

"Now, you don't worry about the police kicking in your door,"
Lundstrom says, "you worry about some thug kicking in your door and
stealing the medicine."

Saskatoon Police Const. Dean Hoover, head of the integrated drug unit,
says Saskatoon hasn't yet seen the problem, cited by the RCMP in
several jurisdictions, where medical growers traffic excess marijuana
to make a profit.

The major issue for police is the lack of available information from
the Health Canada program. The police aren't given a list ahead of
time on where medical grow-ops exist. They're not informed until they
want to do a search warrant, he said. If police agencies knew the
addresses they may also be able to help with enforcement, he says.
Grey is not a good colour for the law, he says.

"Until they get some type of system where they give us lists of who's
got them to ensure they're not going above their quotas, what are we
going to do?" Hoover says.

A Health Canada spokesperson, in an email interview, says the
government will only disclose information to police if a person is
suspected of illegal activity. Otherwise, it's seen as a privacy breach.

The legalization of marijuana or even the over-the-counter sale in a
compassion club in Saskatchewan, where weed is given out to those with
a medical card, is a pipe dream because the acceptance of the drug,
from a cultural perspective, doesn't come close to matching that of
British Columbia, where several dispensaries exist, Hoover says.

Marijuana is the most prolific drug in Saskatoon and its risks
shouldn't be downplayed due to the potency of modern pot, he says.
With the advent of THC pills, there's no need for smoking medical
marijuana, he says.

"I've never talked to a cocaine user or morphine addict that didn't
start off by smoking marijuana," Hoover says. "Anyone that says it's
not a gateway drug is full of shit."

Lundstrom sits behind a desk at the back of his store, hemp posters
adorning the walls and pot paraphernalia strewn around his desk.

He has tried to get a medical exemption himself because of chronic
back problems suffered when he fell off scaffolding, but has been
denied four times by wary doctors. He left the doctor's office in
tears recently after he was told cannabis stimulates appetite, a
side-effect that would not help with his weight. Like the vast
majority of patients who say they need marijuana as a medicine,
Lundstrom continues to buy pot on the black market.

The market exists in Saskatchewan to start a compassion club or
dispensary similar to those in B.C., but those looking to grow or use
for medical reasons are stilted by doctors unwilling to prescribe,
Lundstrom says.

Several advocates say their goal is to start a sustainable commercial
agriculture operation in Saskatchewan to provide medicinal marijuana
to those with exemption cards if the Health Canada restrictions are
lifted.

"There's 50 people I could be growing for right now and I'm only
allowed to grow for two. It's a headache, plain and simple," Lundstrom
says.

"It's still illegal and to many people medical marijuana is just
simply a loophole to an illegal system and that's how it's being treated."

The limit of growing for two users, however, doesn't appear set to
change any time soon. It was established "in order to reduce the risk
of diversion and to protect the health and safety of Canadians,"
Health Canada's spokesperson writes.

Francis, the long-time medical marijuana user whose name has been
changed because of fear of break-ins and the stigma he faces in the
small town, says he's been working out daily, awaiting the day a
burglar comes through the door.

He decided to build his own grow-up -- at a substantial cost --
because product from Health Canada wasn't potent enough and the supply
from growers in B.C. was inconsistent.

A collision in Saskatoon 12 years ago crushed half of Francis' spinal
chord, leaving him unable to feel his legs for three years. A
long-time recreational user, he turned to cannabis, which he smokes or
ingests up to 10 times a day, because heavier prescription pain
killers zapped his energy, left him constipated and unable to sleep.

Slowly, Francis has been able to wean the amount of morphine he uses
down to almost zero, which he credits to medicinal marijuana.

"It doesn't kill the pain, but it deflects it," he says. "It helps
your mind carry on."

MEDICAL MARIJUANA BY PROVINCE

Province People Supportive authorized physicians to
possess

Alberta 282 140

B.C. 1,008 536

Manitoba 57 30

New Brunswick 88 44

Nfld and Lab. 39 24

Nova Scotia 491 159

Ontario 1,631 801

Quebec 305 162

Saskatchewan 100 59

Rest of Canada 28 22

TOTAL 4029 1977

Source: Statistics Canada - 2009

FEDERAL REGULATIONS

Possession, sale and production of marijuana in Canada remains illegal.
However, Health Canada provides an exemption for compassionate care and for
treating symptoms associated with several conditions, including severe pain
or persistent muscle spasms from multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury or
spinal cord disease; severe pain, nausea or anorexia from cancer or
HIV/AIDS infections; and severe pain from forms of arthritis or seizures
from epilepsy.

Health Canada also exempts those who have debilitating symptoms of other
medical conditions that do not respond to conventional treatments. Those
who qualify require a doctor to verify the medical problem and prescribe
the usage. The users are also required to obtain a licence from Health Canada.

The government suggests three sources for medicinal marijuana: Buy the weed
grown for Health Canada from Prairie Plant Systems of Saskatoon, grow your
own or designate someone else to grow it for you. Those who grow marijuana
must be licensed by Health Canada and meet security requirements to prevent
loss or theft. The government also regulates the amount of marijuana that
can be grown and stored.