EX-MOUNTIE SUES OVER MEDICAL POT RAID

Man With MS Claims RCMP Destroyed Legal Grow Operation

A former RCMP officer living with severe multiple sclerosis is suing
the Mounties and Health Canada for damages suffered after his former
colleagues raided his medical marijuana nursery.

Carlos (Cam) Cavaco, 50, and his wife Marnie O'Neil, who also acts as
his sole caregiver, on Thursday filed a B.C. Supreme Court lawsuit
alleging that on two separate occasions, less than eight months apart,
their medicinal pot plants were destroyed by Sooke RCMP.

The lawsuit says the ensuing stress left them spiritually and
emotionally shaken, their health deteriorated and their finances in
ruin.

"Health Canada has bullied our physicians, provided irresponsible
guidelines and put patients in legal limbo," O'Neil complained in an
interview.

"There are gaps in the system that cause people like us to suffer.
Worse, these problems combined with police discrimination against our
medicine creates an environment where people are harassed, their
property and medicine is destroyed and their health is
compromised."

The federal government has not yet responded to the suit and the
couple's claims remain unproven.

Cavaco had a brief but dramatic threeyear career in the 1980s with the
North Vancouver RCMP detachment, retiring with serious health
complications after he shot a man who knifed him.

His medical condition has worsened since, and he must use a motorized
wheelchair.

O'Neil, 48, has lived with spina bifida, scoliosis, spondylolisthesis
and severe sciatica since childhood and was diagnosed with
fibromyalgia in 2006.

Both suffer from a long list of debilitating and painful symptoms and
use marijuana for relief.

Cavaco has had an exemption from the criminal drug laws allowing him
to possess pot under the federal Medical Marihuana [its legal
spelling] Access Program since it was introduced roughly a decade ago,
and O'Neil has had an exemption since 2006.

They also have a licence to cultivate the plant.

Cavaco was using some 30 grams (about an ounce) daily in a variety of
forms - smoking dried buds, ingesting baked and edible goods laced
with marijuana and as an infused massage oil.

One of his allegations is that Health Canada pressured his physician
to arbitrarily reduce that amount to three grams.

The couple says in the lawsuit that on Dec. 1, 2009, the RCMP raided
their licensed growing operation without a valid warrant and destroyed
the crop.

The pair, who in spite of their afflictions ran a Thai restaurant in
Sooke, began to grow in their house. But on July 27, 2010, the lawsuit
says, the Mounties invaded the home and uprooted those plants, too.

No charges were laid after either raid, the two add.

In spite of the raids, on Nov. 11, 2010, Health Canada issued O'Neil a
permit to possess 90 grams of cannabis, to store an additional 360
grams and to grow 15 cannabis plants.

Over the last year, the RCMP in various B.C. jurisdictions have raided
medical marijuana users and dispensaries.

At the same time, the federal government has been reconsidering the
existing controversial access program with an eye to ending the
personal growing exemptions in favour of a corporate commercial
distribution system.

When the current system was instituted, Ottawa believed only a handful
of patients in palliative care would take advantage of the scheme.

Instead, thousands of people have obtained exemptions and thousands
more have applied - outraging some municipalities that are dealing
with an epidemic of growing operations in residential neighbourhoods,
and the hazards they pose.

Police are also critical of the program, saying too much of the
marijuana being produced ends up on the black market.

Lawyer Kirk Tousaw, who is representing the couple, said: "My clients
want to make sure that no more patients suffer." O'Neil said Cavaco
was forced to take morphine and his condition declined dramatically
after his pot supply was taken away.

"It is a slippery slope," O'Neil said in an interview, explaining how
the complications with their health problems caused them to suffer
economic hardships and the collapse of their business.

"As Cam grew more debilitated, I had to turn my focus from our
restaurant, to home. The cost of trying to replace everything that was
destroyed, my own symptoms flaring, working and managing the business,
the stress was off the charts. Then the push over the edge came when
the RCMP returned and it started all over again, only worse."