Pubdate: Thu, 10 Jan 2002
Source: Valley Voice, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 The Valley Voice
Contact:  http://www.mapinc.org/media/1388

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
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens