Pubdate: Thu, 16 May 2002 Source: Westender (CN BC) Copyright: 2002 WestEnder Contact: http://www.westender.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1243 Author: Brian Peterson Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada) HEALTH CANADA NEEDED OUR POT PROS My favourite line in the Tao Te Ching opens verse 60: "Leading the country is like cooking a small fish." Delicate business as anyone with culinary skill knows. It requires heat, but it must be applied most judiciously. An initial blast to sear the skin and lock in the juices. Then the fish must be removed from the grill while still underdone so the residual heat trapped inside finishes the cooking in the time it takes to be slid onto a plate and presented to the diner. It is a job for an artist or a master of the tao. Not the kind of work to be left to some hockey goon or Health Canada bureaucrat. I mention this because the feds have flat-out burnt the small fish of supplying medical marijuana to the ailing, through the doomed six million-dollar monopoly granted to Prairie Plant Systems. Witness the venomous "I told you so's" from the betrayed cannabis community spewing all over Health Canada's lame pronouncements that their first crop grown from a mixed bag of stolen seeds in a Manitoba mine has yielded the bunk they were told it would. Beneath their apologetic smiles lies the simple fact of theft. Their excuse that because the DEA refused to hand over any of their standardized strains the only "legal" source was confiscated seed from police busts is beyond bogus. A quick internet search would have turned up not only a host of seed vendors offering superior strains but sites critiquing the vendors! And yet witness the government confounded, the government that can do anything, as they point out when bending us over a police cruiser. Witness B.C. Senator Pat Carney recognizing the obvious: B.C. has already got functioning medical growing, diagnosing and distribution networks. And functioning very well in spite of punitive action by the law of the land which could certainly find better things to do with their time than interfering with one of the benevolent engines of the economy. Oh yeah, and lest we forget: Witness the sick and needy callously told to wait it out or cruise the black markets and risk arrest. That is unless they've got the chutzpah to negotiate the reams of Health Canada paperwork and get medical specialists to sign letters of recommendation on a subject they know dick about and get growing. Spare me from idiots! Do I consult a doctor when I'm trying to choose between Sleepytime and Chamomille in the tea section? Why would I call a pill-pusher when I'm trying to choose between a sativa or an indica? I talk to an expert, preferably the organic farmer who lovingly nurtured the plant from seed to nicely cured bud. If I can't get to them I go to the buyers who get the best because they know it rubs their customers the right way. And because cannabis is non-toxic, unlike so many pharmaceuticals, if you don't get the relief you seek from one strain it's easy enough to try another-provided, of course, a trustworthy merchant can lay out his or her wares and do business without fear of the ERT swinging through the plate glass and shooting Rover. Does the system need more regulation than that? Witness Jim Wakeford, the first medical exemptee who still spends his dying days exhaustively trying to retrieve his stash and equipment from the courts. His crime: attempting to put into action his supposed rights and help others. Is it any wonder why so few have trusted their personal specs to this posse of seeming incompetents? So witness a government that has mastered the technique of marching in place. And ask yourself: What kind of idiot pretends to sagely listen to all the expert advice then ignores it? Answer: a saboteur. Health Canada has burned the fish and now it's trying to convince us it will get it right next time. Problem is, I never go back to restaurants that burn the food. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom