Pubdate: Thu, 06 Aug 2015
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2015 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/send_a_letter
Website: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: Gordon Sinclair Jr.
Page: B1

CITY, POLICE SERVICE MIRED IN REEFER MADNESS

THERE are the obvious differences: the mountains, the sea, the 
climate and, of course, the housing prices.

But this week, our police service officially delineated another 
difference between Vancouver and Winnipeg. It's an attitude. 
Specifically an attitude toward medical-marijuana dispensaries.

In Vancouver, where there have been unlicensed medical-marijuana 
dispensaries for at least five years, the police service has stood 
by, watched the numbers reach at least 100 and decided illegal 
pot-to-manage-pain storefront operations are not a policing priority. 
And only will be if there are concerns about public safety.

In Winnipeg, the city's only medical marijuana storefront lasted just 
over a month before police moved in and shut it down this week. But 
it's not just our police service's strict enforcement of criminal law 
- - the way Stephen Harper's Conservative government wants it enforced 
- - that led to Tuesday's arrest of store owner and self-styled 
medical-cannabis crusader Glenn Price.

Oh, no. Our attitude about the reefer goes deeper than that.

- ---

It's been nearly three weeks since I met Glenn Price.

That day, Price and his pot-cures pain supporters were happily 
huddled in a tree-shaded courtyard in front of the Public Safety 
Building. It was a media event that had just had been side-swiped by 
a less mellow moment; a guy with a traffic ticket and an 
anger-management issue had just plowed into a row of parked police 
vehicles. But there was Price - sporting a walrus moustache, shades 
and a marijuana-leaf-adorned white ball cap - preaching about the 
pain-management value of marijuana to a small gathering of the 
converted. Price, I would learn, grew up on a farm and in the 
blue-collar city neighbourhood of Brooklands where, at nine years 
old, an older brother offered him his first drag on a joint.

In Price's opinion, pot was a blessing even at that age, even way back then.

"At that time," he explained, "gas and glue was a big thing."

Price said he began using it for medical reasons 15 years ago after 
breaking his shoulder.

As it happened, the day we met, someone else who had a connection to 
Brooklands as a kid was in the audience. Brooklands Speedway, that 
is. Randy Kotyk is 63 now. "When I was 10 years old, I lost my leg at 
Brooklands Speedway. A stock car ran into the grandstand. Sliced off my leg."

Today he is in a wheelchair. And in chronic pain from a series of 
other problems that have had him using a fentanyl patch for so long 
the potent painkiller doesn't work anymore.

"Come and see me tomorrow at 1404 Main St.," Price told him.

"I'm the only one in Winnipeg willing to stick my neck out to help 
people like you. You won't hurt no more. You'll be happy." It's true, 
of course. I mean the part about being the only one in the city 
willing to open a storefront selling marijuana.

"I have stuff for $3 a gram. I have stuff for $10 a gram."

By the time we met, Price had been open for business little more than 
two weeks and had already been warned by police that he was breaking the law.

"They say supplying drugs. I say supplying medicine."

Either way, it's hard not to believe Price didn't want to help people 
in pain. And help himself make a living.

Less than a week after that first meeting, we met again, this time at 
his store where I encountered a middle-aged woman in chronic pain who 
had come to Price for help. In this instance, it was help finding a 
physician who would write her a prescription and showing her how to 
contact the only federally licensed medical-marijuana source in 
Manitoba; a mail-order warehouse with a name that sounds more 
military than medical: Delta 9 Bio-Tech.

"I'm the one who gave her the education," Price said proudly.

"Think about hearing 225 stories like that... It would drag on you. 
Or you would have to do something for the people."

Obviously, Winnipeg police decided they had to do something, too. 
Even if Vancouver police decided long ago that combating violent 
crime and hard drugs was their higher calling.

- ---

The arrest of Price on drug-related charges is not as deep as the 
difference between Winnipeg's and Vancouver's approach to the issue.

Last June, Vancouver became the first city in Canada to regulate 
illegal marijuana dispensaries. There was a message aimed at Harper 
that went with it. "Wake up," said Vancouver Coun. Geoff Meggs. "You 
are completely out of touch with the realities on the ground."

That would also be a message to Vancouver's police service, but 
they're on the ground, and they got it long ago.

And that's why the attitude to the reefer goes deeper in Winnipeg. 
Because our civic leaders haven't had the courage to offer police 
some guidance, move to regulate illegal medical-marijuana 
dispensaries - and defy the Harper government while they're at it.

A Harper government that one might wonder what they're smoking.

If we didn't know better.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom