Pubdate: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) Copyright: 2013 The Vancouver Sun Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477 Author: Mike Hager HAVING A TEA AND A TOKE Nearly 25,000 British Columbians are licensed to use and grow medical marijuana, but the dispensaries and compassion clubs that serve these people work in a legal grey area In an unassuming east Vancouver ground-floor suite, Jeffrey van Dyke basks on a comfy couch in his stoner's paradise. A warm light hits a Bob Marley poster and a clock stuck at 4: 20 p.m. - - the internationally acclaimed time for lighting up a joint. A framed not-for-profit society registration licence also adorns the wall. Since van Dyke started his medicinal marijuana dispensary near Fraser Street and Kingsway in March 2012, roughly 60 doctor-sanctioned patients have been visiting him regularly to buy and use a variety of poultices, sprays and cannabis buds. Most of Vancouver's 16 marijuana dispensaries operate in the Downtown Eastside or near Kingsway. Many look like pharmacies, their sterile storefronts bidding for respect from a public still skeptical about the treatments and a federal government set to introduce laws that may outlaw them next year. While these dispensaries can serve up to thousands of registered members, van Dyke - a grizzled U.S. special forces veteran known to all as Van - says he has capped his membership at 60. "Some dispensaries, you walk in, you take a number and it's all about the number system," the 53-year-old says. "It's not personal, it's clinical. The reason why they select us is it's more of a family. Our skeptics are out there more than not, but this is about making people who are looking to medicate feel comfortable," he says. Asked if the syrupy reggae beats in his dispensary might hurt the credibility of his mission, Van playfully responds: "What other genre of music or nationality embraces the medicinal properties of cannabis? You tell me." He says many of his members suffer anxiety or other mental issues and his suite - rented from a sympathetic landlord whose brother used marijuana during a bout with prostate cancer - offers them a friendly place to smoke and chat about what's going on in their lives. "It's by appointment only so it's very discreet," he says. "Until people know and are comfortable with other members, they make an appointment, they come in here and they pick a strain. You sit down, have a tea and a toke, if you get high, you purchase. If you don't, at least you know the difference between an indica and sativa (strain of marijuana)." Members like Sue Ann Yeo say Van steers them toward the treatments that best suit their needs. Yeo, who suffers from chronic kidney disease, comes to Van's three times a week after her four-hour dialysis treatments to smoke the sativa marijuana that stimulates her appetite. Before Van's, she tried two other dispensaries, but "they don't explain to you exactly what strain does what for you." Before that, the 32-year-old would buy off a street dealer. "He wasn't consistent with his stuff," Yeo says. "He wouldn't give you your money's worth as well, so we were getting tired of him." Van, who resembles an aging punk rocker still capable of holding his own in a mosh pit, says that before he began navigating Canada's medicinal marijuana system in 2007, he bought pot from shady street-corner sellers to numb his throbbing back pain. "Born a Newfie and raised a Yank," Van claims he first became a social activist in 1969, at the age of nine, when he sat and watched the police fire water cannons at civil rights demonstrators in Kansas City's Volker Park. Van says he travelled to Alberta at the age of 20 after a stint "operating in Central America" for the U.S. army special forces led him to renounce his American citizenship in 1980. He became certified in several trades and moved to Victoria in the mid'90s, a time when B.C.'s movement to legalize medicinal pot was burgeoning. After years of bricklaying and welding, a variety of ailments began to grind down his tattooed body. "My body was so beat up because of occupational accidents, and I had for years been prescribed Tylenol 3s and Percocets," Van says. Eventually, he informed his doctor he was smoking pot for the pain, an informal and illegal treatment he says was more effective than the prescribed pain medication. "My doctor told me, 'What are you doing buying this garbage out on the street when you should be growing your own medical marijuana?'" Van soon became a licensed medical marijuana user and grower, and is now one of nearly 25,000 British Columbians with similar licences. That number almost tripled in B.C. last year, and the province now holds more than half of all Canadian licences. The dispensaries and compassion clubs that serve many of these people exist in a legal grey area as Health Canada refuses to issue dispensary licences and declares it illegal for them to serve licensed medical marijuana users. However, the judiciary has ruled people have a right to medical marijuana. Health Canada began growing crops to satisfy this right, but could not meet the increasing demand of patients. That's when compassion clubs and dispensaries began emerging to provide more strains and types of cannabis medication. For now, many dispensaries are at the mercy of police goodwill and judges reluctant to convict their operators. Vancouver police department spokesman Const. Brian Montague sighs when asked about how his department deals with the various dispensaries sprinkled around the city. "The selling of marijuana is illegal, but our policy is that we target street and mid-level traffickers," he says. "That's our focus. We're looking at behaviour that endangers or harms or interferes with the lawful enjoyment of public or private property and offences that contribute to street disorder." Montague says the VPD is aware of Van's dispensary, but hasn't had any complaints yet. "If we received a complaint we'd investigate and we'd look into that complaint, but according to our drug policy, it's not something we would focus on necessarily." Authorities in surrounding municipalities have not been so understanding. The District of North Vancouver passed a bylaw in 2011 banning any dispensaries from operating without federal approval after a medical marijuana dispensary tried to set up shop in the Deep Cove neighbourhood. That same year, three employees of the now-defunct Metrotown Medical Marijuana Dispensary faced 10 charges in total after the Burnaby RCMP raided their Kingsway operation. Longtime pot activist and dispensary operator Dana Larsen says four other dispensaries were raided throughout B.C. in 2011 - in Comox, Chilliwack, Langley and Kamloops. He expects more dispensaries to open in relatively tolerant Vancouver in the coming years. "The vast majority are run responsibly - we know we're under scrutiny," says Larsen, who runs a dispensary across from Victory Square on East Hastings Street that serves 4,000 members. "There's no legislation, no regulation, but there's no law, no federal law. "We try to be a good influence on the area that we're in - we rely on the tolerance of our community." He says any dispensary selling to the general public or failing to screen its members would soon get in trouble with police. " Although we have a good relationship with the VPD, I'm sure they send in undercovers." Van says Vancouver should be "patted on the back" for its approach to marijuana. "Everyone knows, if you want to be tolerated because you're a homosexual, or you're into sex clubs or because you're a punker - you don't live in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan! You go to Vancouver, British Columbia," he says emphatically. "People mind their business here, because they don't want people in their business. And that's why Vancouver functions." - --------------------------------------------------------- VANCOUVER DISPENSARIES *BC Compassion Club Society Address: 2995 Commercial Dr. Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday-Friday; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday Contact: 604-875-0448 Wellness Centre: 604-709-0448 * Delta9 Medical Association Address: 529 E. Hastings St. Hours: 9: 30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Friday: 10 a.m. to 7: 30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday: Contact: 604-569-1091; * Green Cross Society of BC Address: 2127 Kingsway Hours: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Friday; 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday; noon to 4 p.m., Sunday and holidays Contact: 778-785-0370; * The Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary Address: 880 East Hastings St. and 1182 Thurlow St. Hours: 11 a.m. to 6: 45 p.m., every day except some holidays Contact: 604-255-1844 * Med Pot Now Dispensary Address: 4170 Fraser St. Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday; noon to 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Contact: 604-569-2119 * Urban Earth Med Address: 3535 Kingsway Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday Contact: 604-336-4818; * Vancouver Seed Bank Address: 872 East Hastings St. Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week Contact: 778-329-1930 * Westcoast Medicann Address: 2931 Cambie St. Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Saturday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom