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Cannabis Crusade - A House Divided
Pubdate: Sun, 16 Jan 2005
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 Times Colonist
Contact: http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Richard Watts, Times Colonist
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/vics.htm (Philippe Lucas)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?235 (Vancouver Island Compassion Society)
CANNABIS CRUSADE - A HOUSE DIVIDED
On the face of it, Phillippe Lucas, and Ted Smith, share common cause.
They are both passionate in their belief in medical marijuana, to the
extent that both have faced criminal prosecution in pursuit of their
convictions. Why, then, do they barely talk to each other? Times
Colonist staff writer Richard Watts examined the lives and styles of
both men and found the two crusaders separated by a yawning
philosophical gulf.
Ted Smith stopped cutting his hair when he was 15, while Philippe
Lucas looks like he just came from the barber.
Other than that superficial difference, the two men would seem to have
much in common. Both are champions of marijuana in Victoria. They're
both 35 and have founded clubs to supply pot to people who need it to
alleviate medical symptoms. Both have faced criminal charges as a
consequence, since medical marijuana users are supposed to obtain
their pot from the government.
Smith's Cannabis Buyers' Club works out of a storefront on Johnson,
while Lucas' Vancouver Island Compassion Society is just a short step
away on Cormorant Street.
But the philosophical gulf that divides them is much
wider.
Lucas is determined to secure legitimacy for medicinal marijuana, but
he's reluctant to thumb his nose at the law. Smith, however, isn't
afraid to bend the rules if it means relieving someone's suffering. A
gangling six-foot-two with long arms, big square hands and a pony tail
hanging down to the small of his back, Smith couch-surfs between a
friend's home in James Bay and his girlfriend's place in Cobble Hill.
Lucas, a compact five-foot-two with the body of a squash player,
shares a penthouse apartment with his wife in Oak Bay.
The two once worked together, helping operate a network to ensure sick
or disabled people had access to marijuana. That ended in about 1999,
when Lucas left to start a new group, one where members needed a
signed recommendation from a doctor to try marijuana.
Neither will go on the record about the other's beliefs or activities.
But it's clear the two rarely speak to each other, even though their
operations are located less than a block apart.
Their differences are as much about style as about background and
substance.
Smith comes from small-town Canada, while Lucas was raised in
cosmopolitan privilege.
Smith grew up in Cambridge, a small Ontario farm town. His father
worked for a trucking company and most of his uncles, aunts and
cousins are farmers. He attended the United Church of Canada on
Sundays, played hockey on Saturdays and attended school in between.
He was a scout, captain of the under-19 chess club and high school
valedictorian.
He was also the first in his family to attend university, which he did
over the objections of his father -- "You don't need to go to school
to make money. You work to make money." Smith graduated with a B.A. in
philosophy from Wilfred Laurier where he also played rugby for the
varsity first team.
Lucas, meanwhile, comes from the upscale Montreal suburb of Mount
Royal. One of his earliest memories was campaigning for his
Progressive Conservative mother in a federal byelection. He later
attended high school in Boston and Philadelphia after his mother was
appointed Canadian consul general in those cities.
He attended Concordia and Carleton as well as Quebec's Bishop's
University, studying English literature before moving out west to
satisfy his curiosity about the coast. He has lived in London, where
he worked on a screenplay, and knows and loves New York City.
Upon landing in B.C., he took to the ski hills, briefly attended the
University of British Columbia and lived in Kitsilano.
Smith moved west to get away from a place where he was losing control
over alcohol. Depressed by the death of his best friend, a fellow
rugby club member, he moved to B.C., where he first planted trees.
Smith has since given up alcohol and hasn't had a drink in years.
He arrived in Victoria in 1995, first living out of his van and
picking daffodils. His political activism began soon after with Inner
City Youth Works, and he went on head up the Victoria Street Community
Association, two groups that later collapsed.
It was from those groups that he became involved in medical marijuana
advocacy, beginning in 1996 from an apartment.
Lucas also had some serious issues with alcohol, but for him the
biggest blow came in 1995, when his father committed suicide while
drunk and depressed. Also that year, while Lucas was studying for an
education degree at the University of Victoria, he learned he had
hepatitis C, which he'd contracted back in the 1980s from a blood
transfusion.
The loss of his father and onset of the chronic liver disease pushed
him to give up alcohol and gave impetus to his interest in medicinal
marijuana -- he found pot helped with the nausea.
He now holds a Health Canada official exemption that allows him to
possess the substance to treat his illness. And he admits to using it
daily.
Smith began smoking pot regularly back in high school. Even in
university, among the beer-drinking rugby set he was known as
"acid-head Ted," although he says he never consumed a lot of LSD.
Marijuana was something he leaned on to deal with alcoholism and
depression and some sports injuries. But today, he won't admit to
using it because of parole conditions.
The split between the two men hinges on the Compassion Club's
requirement that members carry a doctor's note recommending medical
marijuana.
For Smith, the idea of turning people away, especially when so many
were ill or living on disability pensions, was cruel.
So he researched a list of diseases and conditions with symptoms that
might be relieved with marijuana. And now, to join the Cannabis
Buyers' Club, all that's required is proof of illness or disability --
anything from a doctor's verification of illness to a note from the
welfare office describing a special diet allowance.
Smith's Cannabis Buyer's Club has a membership list of 1,800, an
estimated 60 per cent of whom live on disability pensions.
Lucas' Vancouver Island Compassion Society has only 449 members, half
of whom live on disability pensions.
But while Smith can't say for certain how many of the names on his
list are still valid -- he estimates about 400 memberships are no
longer active -- Lucas has an up-to-date members' list, as well as a
list of 130 doctors in Victoria who have been willing to provide
written recommendations that patients try cannabis.
That level of organization allows Lucas's group to work on university
research projects on topics such as marijuana use and hepatitis C, and
the effects of marijuana smoking on nausea in pregnancy. Lucas also
gets invited to speak widely overseas about the club's activities.
Smith's club is a little on the dark, almost seedy side. The
storefront is industrial-looking, full of cast-off furniture. Posters
on the wall make it look like a student council office. It also has a
little back room where members puff on their prescriptions.
Lucas' Compassion Society is bright, airy and full of neat racks of
pamphlets, blonde-wood furniture and magazines. It has a large space
in back with stacking chairs for meetings. It is, after all, a
political organization.
But while cannabis can be purchased on site, smoking on or even near
the premises is strictly forbidden.
Lucas says he has tried to make the premises more inviting to people
trying marijuana for the first time. And as long as marijuana laws
remain in force, he believes club members should respect authority by
not smoking on the premises -- a rule he credits for the fact the club
has never drawn a single complaint.
Even when he was arrested and charged with possession for the purpose
of trafficking back in 2000, it was Lucas's own complaint that led to
the charge.
The club, based in Oak Bay then, suffered a break-in and Lucas
reported it. Later, Oak Bay police called to say they had recovered
his marijuana. When Lucas claimed it, they charged him. He pleaded
guilty, presented a detailed case and was granted an absolute discharge.
Smith's activities have inspired at least two complaints to police. In
court in the past few weeks, he's been rebuked by judges frustrated by
his unwillingness to adhere to procedure or even present evidence.
Earlier this month, he was found guilty of possession for the purpose
of trafficking, and this week, he's expecting a verdict on a charge of
trafficking in cannabis.
Smith admits he may have been over-confident after a similar case last
September, when he and his counsel provided enough testimony,
witnesses and evidence to convince another judge to grant a stay.
Now he's working on an appeal as well as getting ready for another
charge connected with the distribution of potcookies at a rally at the
Victoria library.
Lucas will have his own case heard in the coming months, after RCMP
raided the Compassion Club's grow operation in Sooke back in May.
It was an operation that Lucas proudly says allowed the club to
operate completely free of the black market for 18 months. During that
time, every scrap of marijuana grown and sold was accounted for in
club records.
It's all part of Lucas' determination to normalize the use of
medicinal marijuana.
"I really believe you have to be pragmatic about your politics," he
said. "There is always the push and pull of drug policy reform."
Marc Emery, noted marijuana activist, president of the B.C. Marijuana
Party and publisher of the glossy magazine Cannabis Culture, knows
both Lucas and Smith.
For Emery, the two represent two faces of the same issue.
Emery, who has been charged 22 times and recently served three months
in jail for passing a joint in Saskatoon, likened marijuana activism
to the gay movement a decade ago: Lots of people smoke marijuana, or
have smoked it. And most Canadians believe it should be legalized. But
right now, few are willing to risk job, security and reputation to
even write a letter to the editor in favour of it.
That leaves people like Lucas and Smith, as different as they are, to
stand up and speak out. "They are coming out of the closet and being
counted and having their opinions noted," said Emery, adding in any
movement or cause, a few activists do all the "heavy lifting."
"Ted is one of the ones doing all the heavy lifting," he said.
"Philippe, he's just more low key."
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MAP posted-by: Derek