Pubdate: Tue, 03 Feb 2015
Source: Parksville Qualicum Beach News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Black Press
Contact:  http://www.pqbnews.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1361
Author: Auren Ruvinsky

'WE'RE IN LIMBO AND WE FEEL LOST,' SAY COUPLE

"After you've taken a lot of opiates and codeines, you remain in bed
all day, you can't get up, get any exercise, or get out of the house,"
said medical marijuana user John Whitlock during last Thursday's rally
for Phoenix Pain Management at Parksville city hall.

He said finding medical marijuana to help manage his pain after an
operation for a fused disc in his back, "opened up a door. It allows
me to get out of bed and make it through the day."

He said unlike pharmaceuticals, which "you are prescribed to take
three times a day or whatever, no matter what the pain, you don't take
(cannabis) all the time, you take one when it's necessary."

"If it's bothering you, can you still tolerate your pain level? Then
you go and have a puff and that will settle you down. At night you
take another variety and you can get to sleep."

"We're in limbo and we feel lost," he said of the current changing
federal laws which mean they are supposed to get larger quantities
from a select few large scale producers who operate by courier.

"But I like to see the product and buy as much as you need," said
John's wife Teresa, who said her condition has improved 200 per cent
since she started using cannabis pills for fibromyalgia.

"We're too old, we don't go out to bars, or hang out behind the high
school where we'd be picked up as perverts," John said. "We don't have
many ways to get it."

"A person can go into Phoenix (in Nanaimo), buy $10 worth and settle
themselves down for a couple days and come back when they need," John
said.

The Whitlocks joined other patients of Phoenix Pain Management in
asking the city and mayor of Parksville to let a compassion club, or
dispensary, operate despite being illegal, pointing to the public
support shown by polls, petitions and the intentional lack of
enforcement by police in some bigger cities.
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MAP posted-by: Matt