[1]BELLEVILLE – Thousands of Canadians grow and use marijuana for medical reasons. Health Canada is making changes to its medical marijuana program that will stop users from growing their own pot. Photo by Greg Murphy
By Greg Murphy [2]
FRANKFORD – I am met at the door of a quaint country house by the incessant barking of an overly anxious Jack Russell.
A middle-aged man shakes my hand firmly and welcomes me inside, all the while trying to calm his dog. He has a slight limp, and he winces in discomfort as he sits down at the kitchen table. He spoke with me on the condition that I use a false name. I will call him Sam.
A very faint smell carries its way toward me from behind a closed door in the back corner of the kitchen. It’s an unmistakable smell. It’s marijuana [3].
Over the period of a couple of hours, I learn about Sam’s struggle with chronic pain syndrome, a condition that pervades his day-to-day life; how medical marijuana has kept him from the pain; and why, after three years of legal pot consumption, he has chosen to grow it illegally because of upcoming changes in Health Canada’s medical marijuana program [4].
In 2001, Health Canada began issuing licences that allow patients who have been prescribed marijuana by their doctors to grow and consume their own pot for medical reasons. Last year, patients using medical marijuana were notified by their doctors that they would have until Tuesday, April 1, to destroy their plants and dismantle their grow-ops to make room for changes in the program. A recent court injunction [5] has allowed patients to continue to cultivate their own pot for the time being. Health Canada is in the process of asking the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn the injunction.
If the federal government wins that appeal, the program changes would see the home production of marijuana moved to government regulated private businesses.
“Turning medical marijuana into big business isn’t fair,” Sam says. “The government is going to make a pile of money from people that are hurting, that don’t have the money to buy (marijuana). To make things worse, insurance companies won’t cover you because it’s still an unapproved, illegal drug.”
Sam is living with a back injury he sustained from working heavy construction in Mississauga: in 2005, he had an accident moving a heavy beam that he says left him in debilitating pain. He was asked to return to work soon after to do lighter jobs on the construction site, and meanwhile failed to get the medical attention he should have, resulting in permanently damaged nerves in his spine.
Prior to being prescribed marijuana in 2010, Sam took morphine [6], Dilaudid [7], oxycodone [8], OxyContin [9] and many other potent painkillers that he says haven’t been safe for him to use.
“For example, before, when I was taking the heavier painkillers, I could drive between Frankford and Wallbridge and I wouldn’t know how I got there. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t remember anything short term when I was using these drugs. I didn’t even know what I was doing half the time. Marijuana is the safest for me to take because I can still be in control of my daily activities,” he says.
In 2013, Sam’s doctor warned him that changes were coming to the medical marijuana program and that he would no longer be allowed to grow his own pot. He continued to grow it anyway.
[10]FRANKFORD – Marijuana from “Sam’s” personal stash. He still smokes it for pain relief despite not having his medical-marijuana licence anymore. Photo courtesy of “Sam”
“I still have the application from last year, with the pictures and everything else. My doctor just told me I’m better off growing my own and saying nothing about it to no one,” Sam says.
Health Canada, on its website, says the program has been subject to “serious abuse” [11] since its inception in 2001. The new regulations seek to “strengthen the safety of Canadian communities, while making sure that Canadians who are authorized, have access to marijuana grown under secure and sanitary conditions.”
Sam shakes his head. His wife joins us at the table.
“I do understand it’s got out of control, but the rules they put in place in the beginning are at fault. Obviously with the rules, some people will abuse the program. But the initial rules were just ridiculous,” he says.
His wife, leaning on a kitchen chair, cuts in. “Like that saying goes, one bad apple spoils the bunch.”
Under the old program [12], patients prescribed medical marijuana could get the drug in three ways. Their first option was to buy it straight from Health Canada and have it delivered right to the door. The second option was that patients could apply to grow and cultivate their own pot plants. The third option was that patients could designate someone to cultivate marijuana on their behalf. Abuses in the program became possible when patients became allowed to grow their own marijuana or have someone grow it for them.
The law says the amount of marijuana a patient is allowed to grow [13] is dependent on the amount of pot prescribed to consume a day. Math equations were used to determine how much a patient was allowed to grow. For instance, if a patient is prescribed five grams of pot a day, they were allowed to grow 25 plants inside, or 10 plants outside. A patient needing five grams a day would need to cultivate 1,825 grams of marijuana for the year to fill a prescription.
According to various “weed blogs” [14] on the Internet, a healthy marijuana plant can yield one pound of consumable marijuana, sometimes two, in one crop. If one pound is 453.6 grams, then 25 plants will produce 11,340 grams per crop. So, if a patient is prescribed five grams a day, and is allowed to grow 25 plants indoors, he or she has the potential to produce over six times the prescribed amount of marijuana they need to fill a prescription per crop – and four crops a year are possible. Alternatively, if the patient is growing 10 plants outdoors, then they can produce over double the amount required.
Sam tells me growing pot indoors is expensive.
“If you’re producing 25 plants, you probably have to sell a third of it just to pay for what it is costing you to grow it. Grow-ops need hard-core lights and irrigation. Your hydro bill skyrockets,” Sam says. “People soon discovered they could make easy money, and a heck of a lot of it too, selling all their surplus pot. All of a sudden, you have massive amounts of legally grown pot being moved into the underground market.”
Sam continues.
“The abuses got worse when some patients applied to have other people grow pot for them. Some designated growers were teaming up with others. They began operating massive indoor grow-ops. It only takes four designated growers, each allowed to grow 25 plants, to run a 100 plant grow-op.”
Sam props his head against his hand and sighs.
“I really wish the government could find a better way of dealing with their own mistakes. It’s going to be too expensive to buy it from them, especially if OHIP won’t cover it because it is still an illegal substance. How will people be able to afford this? They’re just making it too difficult for people like me, who are living with an injury, to seek the medicine we need,” he says intensely. “It makes more sense for me to keep growing it and saying nothing.”
The Ontario Health Insurance Plan [15] won’t cover the use of medical marijuana because it is a federal government program, a spokesperson said over the phone, and Health Canada won’t cover it because it doesn’t have the infrastructure to reimburse patients, QNet News was also told.
“If your doctor tells you this is the best medicine you can take for your condition, then Health Canada should just respect that and stop making it so difficult for people like my husband,” his wife says, leaning forward to accentuate her point.
Already across Canada, government regulated grow-ops have been set up to produce hydroponically grown marijuana. Tweed [16] is a company in Smith’s Falls that is licenced to grow marijuana. It sells pot up to $9 a gram. For a five gram prescription, that will cost the patient $45 a day or $16,425 a year. Sam says patients are better off just buying it on the street.
“Honestly, people who have their pot card are better off just buying it from Joe-Blow Nobody because it’s cheap. It’s cheap because it’s everywhere, and that’s Health Canada’s fault. Its everywhere because of the stupid rules they put in place to begin with, because it was too easy to make a fast buck legally growing too much,” says Sam.
Health Canada is aware of these concerns. In 2013 Health Canada wrote a letter [17] to the editor of the National Post in response to an article written about the medical marijuana program changes. Robert Ianiro, director general of the controlled substances and tobacco directorate of Health Canada, wrote:
“The Government of Canada’s new Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations (sic) will continue to provide reasonable access to a legal source of marihuana for medical purposes. However, the current practice of allowing individuals to produce marihuana for medical purposes in private dwellings poses a number of health, security and safety risks to Canadians. The high value of marihuana (sic) on the illicit market increases the risks of home invasion and diversion to the black market. These production operations could present fire and toxic mould hazards. These risks are not only felt by home producers, but potentially also by their neighbours and community members.
“The new regulations are intended to provide reasonable access for those Canadians who need dried marihuana for medical purposes while protecting public safety.
“Under the new regulations, licensed producers will have to meet extensive security and quality control requirements including requesting security clearance for certain key positions, and meeting physical security requirements (such as a security system that detects intruders). Licensed producers will also be subject to compliance and enforcement measures, and dried marihuana will only be shipped through a secure delivery service directly to the address the client has specified. Taken together, these measures will reduce the risks of diversion of marihuana (sic) to illicit markets.”
Sam has one other concern. Private businesses licensed by Ottawa to produce medical marijuana grow it hydroponically [18] in greenhouses. Sam says he worries for people living with pain like his because he thinks they will pay too much for a product that is not as good.
“Weed needs to be grown in the ground. It needs to be grown naturally in dirt to be of good quality. It would be too artificial if it’s grown in treated water and won’t be nearly as effective,” he said.
“Let me grow my own.”
Related:
Live: interactive chat about growing marijuana [19]
Sloppy weed-handling brings chase and charges [20]
Medical Use of Marijuana – Health Canada [4]
List of Licensed Producers – Health Canada [21]
New medical marijuana law leaves some users in the lurch [22]