Pubdate: Tue, 27 May 2014
Source: Chronicle Herald (CN NS)
Copyright: 2014 The Halifax Herald Limited
Contact:  http://www.herald.ns.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/180
Author: Francis Campbell

PIVOTAL POT CASE IN CUMBERLAND COUNTY SET OVER

AMHERST - A pivotal cannabis-extracts case briefly got underway in
Amherst provincial court Tuesday.

But Judge Paul Scovil agreed to set over until June 9 the complicated
case surrounding Terry Wood, a 53-year-old medical marijuana user and
grower from the Cumberland County community of Williamsdale, near Oxford.

"When you've got the kind of resources that have been put into this
case for a guy that had illegal marijuana through a technicality =C2=85
it's a huge amount of resources," said Amherst lawyer Jim O'Neil.
"What's in it for Canadians? Why are we even here is my question."

That's a question Wood echoes.

He is a single father of three children who works for a blueberry
producer despite what he describes as chronic pain from chipped bones
in his elbows and knees, hip-bone spurs and a dislocated shoulder from
his days as a machinist in the military.

Wood said his saga began in 2002 when he first started using medical
marijuana as a means to control his pain.

He held a federal exemption to possess and grow cannabis but lost his
protection when Health Canada terminated all medical exemptions
approved by Dr. Rob Kamermans, an Ontario physician who signed off on
hundreds of applications at a three-day mobile clinic in Halifax in
2011.

The affected patients were given about 30 days to renew their
applications, but it took Wood five months to get a doctor to give the
OK for him to receive his new permit.

In the meantime, RCMP raided Wood's home in January 2013 and seized
cannabis resin, marijuana, a rifle and ammunition.

Charged with possession and production of marijuana, Wood spent eight
days in jail.

"This is a case where Mr. Wood had a licence to possess and grow
marijuana," O'Neil said. "Health Canada had a dispute with his doctor
and they simply cancelled his licence, and then he was arrested for
possessing the marijuana, which he grew legally. It's a very unusual
case."

Wood feels that he has been harassed. "I want to stop other people
from having to go through the same harassment."

The current charter challenge is about cannabis extracts, including
tea, brownies, tincture, oil and others. In 2012, a British Columbia
judge struck down that portion of the medical marijuana access
regulations prohibiting cannabis extracts for authorized patients in
that province. The Wood decision will mark the first time outside of
B.C. that the constitutionality of denying access to extracts will be
ruled on.

"It's the medical benefit of the oil as compared to the dry cannabis,"
Wood said. "Unless you're a cow or a sheep with two stomachs, you
can't eat dried plant matter. The oil is medicine in British Columbia,
so how can it not be medicine in Nova Scotia?"

Further complicating his constitutional challenge is the March
decision by a federal court judge in Vancouver to grant a last-minute
reprieve for medical marijuana users who say they need to be able to
grow their own pot at home.

The judge granted an injunction allowing those like Wood who have a
personal production licence to continue to grow medical marijuana for
now, pending the outcome of a trial to be held at a later date.
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