NO MORE, SAYS POT ADVOCATE

Brian Carlisle is done with growing medicinal marijuana.

Despite using it to help with a half dozen debilitating conditions, he
says the risk to him and more importantly his family is no longer worth it.

Carlisle was the victim of a brutal beating early Wednesday morning,
apparently at the hands of criminals looking for marijuana. At least
five people, alleging to be undercover police, got into his house and
bound both him and his wife. They did not harm his children.

He said news reports that the invaders took a small amount of
marijuana are not correct, as there were really no plants to take-at
most, only a couple of stragglers in a separate building.

"They came back in the home very upset," he said.

They did take some cash from his wallet but also tortured Carlisle
with Tasers and began to hit him with a metal pipe. They also hit him
in his left eye apparently using a board with a nail in it, and
covered his body with some type of toxic spray, probably a bear spray.

"They say it's a kind from Switzerland that's extremely
potent."

They also gagged him with tape, something he thinks could have made
him suffocate had his facial hair not broken the seal.

"Somehow this mustache made it so that the tape didn't stick," he
said.

Carlisle said the group had guns but is not sure why they did not just
kill him. He figures they were organized crime and wonders if they are
linked to other similar home invasions in the Lower Mainland.

"They were all communicating by walkie talkie radios," he said. "They
were extremely quite until they started bashing my head in."

Carlisle is a well-known advocate of medicinal marijuana. He said he
has been robbed six times. As well, someone took shots at his Holy
Smoke Healing Centre, now closed, shortly after it opened.

He is critical of law enforcement for having harassed him in the past,
and he is just as critical of the federal government for not making a
usable form of medicinal available to patients who need it. Carlisle
and many others have described the government-grown pot from an
operation in Flin Flon, Man., as being useless. The only thing left is
for patients then to get a licence from Health Canada to grow
marijuana for their own use. And to Carlisle, this means he and anyone
else with a licence ends up as a sitting duck for criminals who would
rather steal marijuana than grow their own.

"I didn't want to be a farmer in the first place," he
said.

Carlisle does not expect the authorities to change their approach
anytime soon.

In the meantime, he and his family have moved to an undisclosed
location. He said he is studying to be a lawyer but in the meantime is
trying to recuperate from his injuries, which include hairline
fractures, a broken jaw, damage to his lymph nodes, and serious
bruising. He is also checking with a specialist to determine if his
left retina is detached.

While he does not plan on growing medicinal marijuana, he still
worries about what the future has in store.

"Am I left to be a target?"