Why Can't Ottawa Deliver a Sensible, Humane Medicinal-Marijuana Program? Jim Kerr was making lunch one Friday afternoon last month when seven police officers burst in, put him up against the wall and handcuffed him. "I have multiple sclerosis and grow marijuana for it," he told them. "Shut up," said an officer. "You're not under arrest yet." "The marijuana is upstairs in a room I keep locked when the kids are home," he said. "Shut up," he was told again. From upstairs came the gleeful howls of policemen: "We got it! Bust him!" [continues 984 words]
Will a New Marijuana Mist Become the Aspirin of the Twenty-First Century? Philippe Lucas is apologizing for the quality of his cannabis. He is director of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, which dispenses medicinal marijuana from behind an old storefront in Victoria. "This used to be a school of Chinese medicine," he says. "Can you feel the healing vibe?" Not at first. Apart from a comfy, well-worn couch in the waiting area, and a batik with yin-yang dolphins that you brush aside to enter the dispensing office, the place feels like a regular medical clinic. It reflects Lucas's personality: lean, clean-cut, and intense - there's nothing of the spacey stoner about him. If there's a "healing vibe," it emanates from the staff: the receptionist dressed in a fuzzy old sweater welcomes clients with "Hello, beautiful!" and "Can you use a hug?" Then she hugs. [continues 4609 words]
Vancouverites were highly visible at Amsterdam's Cannabis Cup, and sometimes visibly high. But, writes Brian Preston, important stuff happened too. On the eve of the 13th Annual High Times Cannabis Cup, which wrapped two weeks ago in Amsterdam, I shared a table with an English couple named Robbie and Anne Marie, at a coffee shop called Rookies. They were "skinning up," as the English like to say - rolling tobacco and marijuana (in this case a strain called Northern Lights) into big, three-paper joints. Smoking cannabis is illegal in Britain, of course, but the seeds are legal, and can be bought in any fish-bait shop. Robbie explained why: Not long after the Second World War some Frenchmen came over to compete in a famous British fishing derby. The French brought hemp seeds, which they boiled until soft, then attached to hooks. British fish went crazy for cannabis, and the Frenchmen won the derby. "So hemp seeds were legalized in Britain," said Robbie. [continues 2506 words]
