Pubdate: Sat, 05 Apr 2014
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Blair Crawford

MAN HAS NO INTEREST IN LICENSED MARIJUANA

Pain Sufferer Fears Official Product Will Cost More, Be Less
Effective

The last of David MacDonald's homegrown "catatonic" strain marijuana
is harvested, dried and ready to be jarred.

It's about a four-month supply for MacDonald and his wife, Debbie, who
each have Health Canada permits to use the drug to control their
chronic pain.

What happens when the stash runs out is anyone's guess, as the Orleans
couple, and almost 38,000 other legal users, await the courts to rule
on how Canada's medical marijuana program will be administered. Will
they be allowed to grow their own? Or will they have to buy their
marijuana from a federally licensed supplier like Tweed Inc. of Smiths
Falls?

"A licensed producer? I have no interest," MacDonald said. "I'm not
going to be able to get marijuana as good as I can grow."

MacDonald said his crop was last tested at 17.2 per cent THC and 9.8
per cent CBD, two of the active ingredients in the drug. "Catatonic is
known as the ' CBD Queen'," he said.

"It has some of the highest levels of CBD, as well as THC, going. You
just can't find that.

"I think there's one of the new licensed growers selling it, and it's
10 or 12 dollars a gram. How are we going to afford that?"

MacDonald and his wife are each allowed up to five grams of marijuana
a day. At $10 a gram, the family dope bill would top $1,500 a month.

Ironically, the federal government said people who grew their own
marijuana were allowed to sell their final crop to a supplier like
Tweed in a one-time offer, he said.

"It was like the government was saying the marijuana I had grown was
illegal at that point and not safe. But if I turned around and sold it
to Tweed or somebody - which I would have been allowed to on a
one-time only deal - then if they took it, cleaned it and, you know,
waved their hands over it and said abracadabra - they could then sell
it back to me at whatever price they wanted.

"Then the marijuana that had been previously illegal and unsafe to own
would now be legal."

Homegrown medicinal marijuana was to have become illegal on April 1,
when legitimate users were supposed to have destroyed their own
stashes and signed up with a licensed supplier. Last month, a court in
B.C. granted an injunction that puts that order on hold. The federal
government says it plans to appeal.

MacDonald, 58, admits he smoked a lot of marijuana when he was
younger, but had stopped using.

"I told my wife that dope was for dopes," he said.

He shattered a knee in 1974, then broke his leg in two places on
Canada Day 1999. The chronic pain he suffers is excruciating -
"Basically, I walk around on broken bones."

He was taking prescription opioids to control the pain - the
equivalent of 50 Tylenol 3s a day, he says - when he decided to try
marijuana instead: one dope-laced cookie a night, a second during the
day for "breakthrough" pain.

"I find in some instances it works well. In other instances, for me,
it doesn't. I don't think it's a panacea by any stretch of the
imagination. It's like any other medication: different people are
going to get different responses."

He started growing his own supply in 2003, then "went legal,"
registering with Health Canada in 2010. It's a decision he now regrets.

"I'm like a lot of growers who did that, who say that with 20-20
hindsight we would never have gone legal. All it did was put us on a
list."  
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D