Pubdate: Mon, 20 Oct 2003
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2003 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Jack Knox

MEDICAL-MARIJUANA 101: MALASPINA GOES TO POT

Hmm, got some time to spare and a yearn to learn, let's see what they're 
offering at Malaspina's continuing education department: Creative drawing, 
darkroom photography, Microsoft PowerPoint, pruning ornamental shrubs, 
medical marijuana ...

What? This can't be for real. I mean, who would want to learn how to prune 
ornamental shrubs?

But the medical-marijuana course, it hardly raised an eyebrow after they 
added it to the list at the university-college's Cowichan campus this fall. 
It's a one-day seminar, to be taught by Eric Nash, the Duncan man who, 
along with wife Wendy Little, recently earned organic certification for the 
pot they grow. Read all about it on their 200-page Web site, 
medicalmarihuana.ca.

Cyberpot? Organically grown dope? Schools that teach Marijuana for 
Beginners? This, of course, confirms everything the rest of Canada ever 
thought about B.C., where the streets are lined with lava lamps and the 
national anthem has been replaced by Tommy James and the Shondells singing 
Crimson and Clover.

Yes, well, we're used to the stereotype. What's newer, though, is the shift 
in opinions, legal and public, that allowed Malaspina to take the phrase 
"higher learning" so literally.

Teaching dope-growing used to earn you 10 years, not tenure.

Not that Nash's Nov. 15 course is really about running a grow show. The 
focus is on negotiating Canada's medical marijuana laws, a how-to guide to 
applying for the right smoke legally.

Still, the existence of any marijuana-related course is something that only 
recently would have been contemplated. Malaspina's Janet Germann says the 
idea was greeted with rumbles of reservation -- "It was almost pulled out 
of the brochure" -- but won public praise after being allowed to proceed.

Nash recognizes the change. "Every few days I turn to Wendy and say, 'A few 
years ago, who would have thought that we would be doing this?' "

"This" is not just the Malaspina course, but the Web site and the pot they 
grow with Health Canada's blessing.

It began in 2001, the year Ottawa reluctantly introduced rules that would 
allow access to medical marijuana. The feds, uncertain about the medical 
benefits and worried about back-door legalization for recreational users, 
didn't want to make things easy. Wendy's dad, suffering from advanced 
Parkinson's disease, found the process difficult. Eric, a Web designer, 
researched the regulations and posted his findings on the Internet. "Then 
the site just started getting traffic," says Nash.

Pretty soon Wendy and Eric had each volunteered to produce pot for one 
smoker, as allowed under the law. Most of the 642 Canadians licensed to 
have medical marijuana grow it themselves, but 58 people designate others 
to do it for them.

Nash and Little jumped through the hoops to make it all legal, liaising 
with the RCMP, submitting to criminal record checks. Canada is dotted with 
self-described medical-marijuana organizations that push the boundaries of 
the law by dispensing the drug to thousands of unlicensed users, but Nash 
says he and Wendy go strictly by the book.

"Every gram is accounted for. Every crop is accounted for." They also got 
that organic certification by adhering to rules governing everything from 
the soil to the paint on the walls.

Eric's licence allows him to grow 15 plants at a time; Wendy may grow 25, 
the amount needed to supply her patient with the physician-prescribed five 
grams a day. There's no money in it, Nash says. The $100 they charge for an 
ounce of certified organic pot just covers costs, he says, adding wistfully 
that he wishes it could be done more profitably.

Ah, but maybe it can. An Ontario court ruling has been interpreted as 
stating that designated growers can produce pot for as many licensed 
smokers as they want, so applications are in the works for Eric and Wendy 
to grow for another half dozen patients. Health Canada, however, says the 
one-grower, one-patient rule remains.

Nash distances himself from any suggestion that his is some sort of 
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers operation. "We're just basic people," he 
says, university grads in their 40s, out to help ailing folk who want 
medical marijuana. "They don't want to be going into a head shop to buy a 
pipe, and they don't want to be going down to East Hastings to buy some 
weed." (The government distributed some of its own dope this summer, but 
the product was roundly criticized as being too weak and hard on the throat.)

Hence the Malaspina seminar, for which about 10 people have signed up. It 
will mostly deal with negotiating the bureaucracy, but will also involve 
plant selection. (The pain-relieving indica strain is better for conditions 
like multiple sclerosis, Nash says, while the sativa variety is more of a 
stimulant, something that may increase the appetite of someone with cancer 
or AIDS.)

Rudimentary growing will also be taught. "We're not going to get into the 
technical details of hydroponics and that sort of thing. It's basically how 
to throw a seed in a pot and get good results."

Not the sort of thing you would have expected to hear a few years ago, and 
not, perhaps, something we will hear in the future. Canada's new health 
minister, Anne McLellan, has made it clear that she is not in love with the 
whole concept of medical marijuana, which she says has no basis in science. 
Don't expect it to remain legal if studies don't prove it to have 
therapeutic value.

But medical marijuana is legal right now, so Malaspina is happy to have the 
subject taught as part of its Healthy Outlooks program.

"We're going to offer it again next spring," says Germann, the 
administrative co-ordinator of the continuing education department. "It's a 
sign of the times, isn't it?