TAYLOR SPREADS MEDI-JUANA MESSAGE

The city's well-known ex-mayor has garnered attention for years in support
of medical marijuana and now he has a new shop, an improved grow unit for
sale and he's even brought his message to the classroom.

Earlier this year Brian Taylor brought Medical Marijuana 101 to a college
campus near you. Taylor and partner, Barb St. Jean, completed a successful
tour of Selkirk College sites around the Kootenays to help explain and
discuss the laws and the pitfalls regarding the legal growing and smoking
of marijuana for medical conditions.

In Taylor's report of the Kootenay tour to Selkirk administration he sums
up the overall impression of those who participated as one of frustration.

"Patients that are currently using medical marijuana for symptom relief,
from chronic illnesses that would qualify them under the new access
regulations, cannot get legal access because the system has failed them,"
the report reads.

Despite the problems many have experienced, the use of marijuana as a legal
medical alternative has come a long way.

"I really do think Health Canada is trying to make these things work,"
Taylor said.

Health Canada has outlined the rules to obtain an authorization to possess
marijuana, a licence to produce and grow marijuana, as well as the legal
information that patients and physicians need to know.

The biggest problem now according to Taylor is that doctors are
stonewalling the system. He says the Canadian Medical Association and
insurance companies have warned doctors of risk and liability and
recommended that they protect themselves by not giving approval for medical
marijuana.

During the Medical Marijuana 101 tour, which visited the communities of
Trail, Nelson, Grand Forks, Kaslo, Nakusp and Castlegar, Taylor heard the
financial, legal and bureaucratic frustration of chronically ill
individuals who are looking to marijuana as a last resort.

Taylor says one glaucoma sufferer living on $900 a month in disability was
interested in growing his own medicine to replace the $600 a month in
prescription drugs that he soon would have to pay for and could not afford.

Another chronically ill 55-year-old-man who Taylor says would clearly
qualify under the Health Canada regulations got up the nerve to ask his
doctor for a referral to a specialist for obtaining marijuana only to hear
his doctor say, "I'll just pretend I didn't hear that."

The regulations currently spell out three categories of who can apply for
marijuana possession. All three applications require medical proof that
conventional medicine has failed them. The first category is for
applicants who have a terminal illness with less than 12 months to live no
matter what is killing them. The second is for those who suffer from
specific symptoms of illnesses like Multiple Sclerosis, cancer or AIDS. The
third is the trickiest and requires not one but two medical specialists to
declare conventional treatments haven't worked and pertains to chronic
conditions like impotence or anorexia.

On the home-growing front, Taylor's newest personal growing unit (PGU)
looks like a home entertainment unit complete with closing front doors. It
sells for about $2,500 at his newly opened shop on Donaldson near the SPCA
and he is also working on a much smaller and more inexpensive version that
he hopes to sell for under $1,000.