DRUG DEALERS FILL HIS PRESCRIPTION

Dying Man's Legal Drug Only Provided By Criminals

BEAVERTON - Paul Phillips says the government has sent him to the streets
in search of his medication.

The Beaverton resident is receiving palliative care for the cancer that
spread to his brain and bones.

Wasting away from nausea and lack of sleep, he was given a prescription to
smoke marijuana last year and a license from the Health Canada to do it.
Only now that the drug's ability to relieve pain and restore appetite has
stopped him from wasting away and helped him defy doctor's prognoses,
Phillips' safe supply of marijuana has been taken away.

Now his wife has been forced to look for it on the street.

"The government has basically made me a criminal. I'm supplying gun runners
and terrorists," Phillips told the Daily Post about the situation he's been
forced into.

The predicament began on Aug. 13.

On that day, Toronto Police raided the Toronto Compassion Centre, an
operation that grew marijuana and sold it to about 1,200 people like
Phillips who had been prescribed marijuana because of a chronic or terminal
illness.

Four members of the centre who used to provide relief to sick and dying
individuals with a license to possess up to one ounce of marijuana were
arrested, and Phillips and the others were left to fend for themselves. The
quality on the street is unreliable, the supply uncertain and the sources
dubious at best, but Phillips and his wife say they have no other choice
but to find the drug this way.

"They let me use it, but there's no place to go buy it...we still have our
licenses, but there's no place to go buy it," he said.

"We don't really have a choice because once we get to the point where he
hasn't eaten in three or four days, we get desperate," Ronda Phillips
added. The desperate search for marijuana is just the latest struggle in a
battle that began a year ago when Phillips went to the doctor for a pain in
his shoulder.

An X-ray would reveal that he had tumours in his lungs.

Further tests showed that the cancer was in his lymph nodes and had spread
to his bones and his brain.

When the diagnosis was made, a round of chemotherapy treatments started,
but it only made Phillips, who was given mere months to live, even more
sick. He felt at his worst - with just 100 lbs on his 6" frame - when his
Beaverton doctor agreed to write him a letter supporting his need for
medicinal marijuana.

Shortly after, doctors decided his cancer was too advanced to be treated
and he was left to live his remaining time in as much comfort as possible.
"They figured he was too sick, so why put him through it, give him the
marijuana and let him go out and live," Ronda said.

It's not a cure, but two to three joints a day allow Phillips to maintain
his weight.

Where he used to be too sick to hold down food, too weak to get out of bed,
suffering from too much pain and anxiety to sleep, he can enjoy some of his
favourite pastimes.

"It's a lot better, I can do stuff, go fishing, go golfing, it's a better
quality of life," he said.

"When I was sick there, I thought I was going down fast, but I could go out
and play 18 holes...I feel like I could live for two years."

Living day by day and searching for the marijuana that helps sustain him
day by day, Phillips is one of many unlikely crusaders for medicinal
marijuana. His need for the drug proved in fact and verified by doctors, he
waits for Health Canada to approve its sale.