MARIJUANA 101 AT SELKIRK

Checked out the new calendar from Selkirk College? Did you read it very
carefully? If not, you may have missed a very interesting course that
seems quite appropriate for this neck of the Kootenays: Medical Marijuana 101.

"Anyone who is considering applying for a section 56 exemption to use
marijuana for medical purposes or any 'designated grower' who may consider
growing for a medicinal patient should take time for this course." says the
calendar.

"Review the Medical Marijuana Access Regulations, which include a general
introduction, a review of the eligibility criteria, and the filling out of
forms, as well as establishing a prescription level and finding a
supportive physician. Then look at supply options: growing at home
outside/inside; equipment and support; security and the law."

The course instructor is Brian Taylor from the Grand Forks Cannabis
Research Institute (and also the Grand Forks hemp Co.) It's aimed at
people who want to grow and use marijuana for medical reasons, or for their
designated growers, but anyone can take it, Taylor says. So far, 300
people in BC have received a licence, 350 in the rest of Canada, mostly in
Ontario and Quebec.

"Anybody can sign up for it. For people who are going to play in the grey
area, it gives them an idea of the medical rules...The act is difficult to
understand - even the number of plants they can grow is very confusing. We
want to take the mystery out of the rules, and out of growing marijuana. We
want to encourage people to grow their own and work within current
regulations."

People in "the grey area" are those who don't plan to apply for a licence
"but want to know about a reasonable set of growing guidelines.

"We give people a broad overview in terms of glitches. We give them a look
at problems and reality."

As well as covering regulations, Medical Marijuana 101 goes into "the very
basics about cultivars and the effect of certain strains on certain
[medical] conditions.

"We don't overwhelm them with information. We teach them what a bud looks
like, how to trim it, what you want to be smoking or not smoking."

Taylor also instructs people on alternatives to smoking.

"On the buds there's a white crystally thing called tricomb" which can be
made into a concentrate. Using this will reduce the amount of carbon going
into the lungs, although "there is evidence that moderate use is not
harmful to the lungs."

"A growing number of doctors are saying 'to heck with scaremongering, let's
help our patients find their own medicine."

At a training session in Chilliwack for medical users, Taylor said, of the
seventeen people attending three had never even seen a pot plant and only
one had any experience with use.

"They were keenly interested in growing marijuana as an alternative medicine."

Taylor has talked with some of the MLAs in the Kootenay Caucus, telling
them the medical use laws herald a major economic change in the area. The
domestic market is changing, he said; at present about half the pot grown
is used locally, while half goes over the US border. When medical users
start legally growing their own, there will be far less domestic demand.

The RCMP have been invited to sit in on the course, "but we haven't had a
positive response."

A "nutrient war" is starting, as well. Several companies are gearing up to
meet the demand for nutrients, and are scrambling to be identified with the
marijuana market.

For more information, call the research institute at 442-5166 or visit the
website, http://www.cannabisresearchinstituteinc.com