Lalanya
Blue McGraw was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2001, after a biopsy
revealed that small growths in her chest and neck were cancerous. Her condition
was serious, and death was a very real potential outcome, though there were
treatment options available.
“I
was told that there were medical treatments which had proven highly successful
for curing this type of cancer at its stage, and I quickly began a protocol of
chemotherapy followed by radiation,” says McGraw. The cancer responded by
shrinking in size at first, but then began to grow again. They tried several
chemotherapy drugs and two bone marrow transplants, with little success.
“In
2009, I joined the B.C. Compassion Club Society and started using cannabis
frequently to help with my symptoms of the cancer and the side effects of
chemotherapy,” says McGraw. Cannabis helped relieve her nausea and pain, as well
as increasing her appetite and aiding with sleeping. “What I didn't
anticipate,” says McGraw, “was that it appeared to slow the progression of my
cancer.”
Though
the Cancer Agency had exhausted all their treatments for her, McGraw’s use of
medical marijuana seemed to make a huge difference in the growth of the cancer
cells. “My oncologist had no explanation but simply said ‘whatever it is you're
doing, keep it up.’ And I did just that,” says McGraw.
However,
there are drawbacks to using medical marijuana. “I know of people who were
denied life-saving surgeries because of their choice to practice this illegal
pain management,” says McGraw. She also knows people who have had doctors
refuse to sign forms on their behalf: “I have another friend who passed away
recently with a ferocious spirit, but a petite, frail, and weakened body that
could no longer fight harder than the cancer,” says McGraw. “With all that she was
doing to defy the odds, she didn't have the energy or time to go through the
steps of obtaining permission to use cannabis from a dispensary, and she was
uneasy with the inconsistency and risk of buying off of the street, so to speak.”
The
illegality of marijuana often scares patients away from using it, and because
it hasn’t been studied in combination with other medications, doctors cannot
always confirm that using medical marijuana won’t cause complications. People
are often unwilling to take that risk.
“The
tragic losses are too plentiful and painful for me to continue to list them,”
says McGraw. “I'm left with the insight to say with conviction that because
marijuana is illegal in Canada, people that I know, love, and miss greatly were
denied direly needed comfort.”
*
* *
The
chief medical health officers in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and
Saskatchewan recently published a paper in Open Medicine analyzing Canada’s
illicit drug policies. They concluded that criminalization of marijuana and
other drugs has not worked, and that an alternative model should be
implemented, such as regulation and taxation.
“The use of illegal drugs remains a serious threat to community health,” the paper reads. “However, despite the substantial social costs attributable to illegal drugs, a well-described discordance between scientific evidence and policy exists in this area, such that most resources go to drug law enforcement activities that have not been well evaluated.”
They
point out that when the Office of the Auditor General of Canada last reviewed Canada’s
drug strategy in 2001, it estimated thatof the $454 million spent annually on
efforts to control illicit drugs, $426 million (93.8 per cent) was devoted to
law enforcement.
The
report was in part a response to Bill C-10, which imposed mandatory minimum
sentencing for minor drug law offenses. Despite the estimated $1 trillion
dollars that the United States has spent on their war on drugs, it has widely been
shown to be ineffective.
“In
addition,” the paper reads, “although reducing the availability of cannabis has
been a central focus of drug law enforcement efforts, over the past 30 years of
cannabis prohibition the drug has remained 'almost universally available to American
12th graders,' according to US drug use surveillance systems funded by the US
National Institutes of Health, with 80–90 per cent of survey respondents saying
that the drug is “very easy” or “fairly easy” to obtain.”
In
February 2012, a group of former B.C. attorney generals wrote an open letter
stating that cannabis prohibition is a failed policy, and should be ended.
“Thanks to the police intelligence efforts of organizations such as the RCMP, it
is now commonly accepted knowledge that marijuana prohibition drives organized
crime and related violence in B.C.,” the letter states. This followed a similar
letter written by former Vancouver mayors in November 2011, also condemning marijuana
prohibition.
"We
need to acknowledge that our current approach to some of our substance-use
policies is perhaps not as evidence-based as it should be," said Dr. Paul
Hasselback, chair of the Health Officers' Council of B.C.
*
* *
In
May 2010, Marc Emery was extradited to the United States by the Canadian
government to stand trial on conspiracy charges. He is currently in Federal
prison in Mississippi, with an earliest release date of July 2014.
“He
[Marc] is Canadian, paid his taxes on seed sales, was well-known for what he
did, never hid anything, and he never left Canada, so it was a big shock to
most Canadians and people worldwide that American law enforcement could arrest
somebody in Canada and have them face life in prison,” says Jodie Emery, Marc Emery’s
wife and current manager of the Marc Emery’s Cannabis Culture Headquarters store,
the BCMP Vapour Lounge, Pot TV, and Cannabis
Culture
magazine.
While
operating in Vancouver, Marc Emery was “sending seeds all over the world,
bringing millions of dollars in to finance ballot initiatives, political
parties, conferences, all sorts of peaceful democratic activities and
activism,” explains Jodie Emery. Through public speaking and activism, Emery
continues to advocate for marijuana legalization.
“The
war on drugs is incarcerating millions of people all over the world who never
hurt anybody,” says Emery. She also notes the benefits of cannabis, including
the properties of industrial hemp, as well as medical marijuana. Emery explains
that the stress-relieving benefits marijuana has on users can be extremely
beneficial to overall health.
“People
who smoke a joint aren’t going to get angry or violent, they are going to sit
on the couch and eat chips. Everybody jokes about that, but it’s because
there’s truth to it,” she says. “If anything can reduce your stress levels,
that extends your life … eating healthy, or doing healthy activities, or using
cannabis can reduce your stress level, which can extend your life and reduce
the likelihood of getting sick. So in that sense, marijuana should be used by
people if it works well for them.”
*
* *
Despite
growing public opinion in support of the legalization of marijuana, the
legislation regarding minor drug charges has recently become more severe,
rather than less. “We know that more and more Canadians under Harper’s government
are going to be going to prison,” says Emery. “Bill C-10, including mandatory minimums,
is guaranteeing that we are going to see a lot of non-violent Canadians put in prison,
and even more worrisome is that private prison companies, who have never
operated in Canada before, are now meeting with our government.”
The
effects of privatized prisons are clear in the United States, where the prison
industry is the fastest growing industry, and prisoners labour at extremely low
wages while free citizen unemployment rates climb.
“They
are for-profit companies that exist on the stock market, and they have to
guarantee that their prisons are always full,” says Emery. The emphasis is
taken away from prevention and rehabilitation, and new laws are lobbied for by
private prison companies, rather than created out of necessity.
In
2008, two judges in Pennsylvania pled guilty to accepting bribes from the
owners of two for-profit juvenile facilities. Called the “Kids for cash”
scandal, the judges accepted $2.6 million in return for imposing harsh
sentences for juveniles brought before their courts. “So we’ve got this serious
corruption that goes on, where law enforcement is being bought out by prison industries
to ensure that people are being put in prison,” says Emery. “That is immoral
and unjust in the extreme, and unfortunately that is going to happen here.”
Although
Emery does agree that violent criminals are often given sentences more lenient
than they are perceived to deserve, she notes that it is often due to
incorrectly followed procedure. “The reason that so many of those dangerous
people aren’t being dealt with properly is that 70 per cent of all court
resources are used for smaller, nonviolent drug offences,” says Emery. If
prohibition were ended, the justice system would be able to function optimally.
According to Emery, imposing harsher sentences for nonviolent criminals is not
the solution.
“This
prohibition isn’t working to make streets safer, it’s not working to get rid of
gangs,” says Emery. “You have to wonder why prohibition continues, if all the
proof shows that it’s not helping solve problems, it’s only helping to make
certain people really rich. So that raises some questions.”
According
to RCMP Superintendent Ray Bernoties, in a speech made to the Canadian
University Press on Mar. 3, “No decision we make today is going to make gang
violence go away. There isn’t one black and white answer.” He pointed out that
there are still illegal tobacco and alcohol industries, mostly operating in
rural areas. Bernoties also noted that the gang-run marijuana trade in B.C.
often exports to other countries, so simply ending prohibition in Canada would
not eliminate organized crime activity.
“Gangs
will be violent no matter what the substance,” says Bernoties. He does note,
however, that many of the problems associated with drug use are health care
related, particularly addiction. “For me,” says Bernoties, “the answers to
crime have very little to do with law enforcement.”
*
* *
Although
many people agree that prohibition in Canada is harmful and should be changed,
there is no true consensus on what model should replace it, particularly in
regards to cannabis. Some people believe that marijuana should be regulated and
taxed, similarly to alcohol and tobacco, while others believe that marijuana
should be able to be grown by anyone, like any other plant.
"For
the last decade, Portugal has decriminalized all drug use and they have some of
the lowest rates of drug use in Europe and they have some of the least amounts
of harm from drug use," said Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia's chief
medical health officer, in a CBC article. Strang is one of the authors of the
Open Medicine paper suggesting that marijuana ought to be taxed and regulated.
“From
this point forward there’s a lot of discussion and ideas and debate that need
to take place,” says Emery. “Unfortunately, prohibition is easier to keep in
place … its a lot easier than doing such a drastic overhaul that would have
consequences in everybody’s lives.”
McGraw
hopes that cannabis can be legalized, and that the transition and function of
the new model be derived from a variety of perspectives. “I would ultimately
like to grow my own cannabis at home and make my own medicine from my
organically grown plants,” she says. “I think that's a fair aspiration and I
believe that legalization should incorporate that option.”
*
* *
In
regards to other illicit drugs, many experts suggest that prohibition is doing
more harm than good. “The criminalization of people who use drugs continues to
prove ineffective in reducing rates of drug use and has instead contributed to
substantial health-related harms,” states the Open Medicine paper. A recent
study by the World Health Organization concluded that countries that had
stricter illegal drug policies for users did not have lower levels of use than
those with more tolerant policies.
“There
are a lot of activities that people can do that can kill them. Eating peanuts,
my goodness: peanuts kill people every single day, so let’s make those illegal,
and send all the peanut farmers to jail. Of course nobody is proposing that,
because it wouldn’t make sense,” says Emery. “The best approach is just to
educate about proper, healthy use for activities, and help those who face
problems with any sort of activity. When it comes to illegal drugs, they should
be legal, and regulated too.”
For
McGraw, the war on drugs has not only resulted in the suffering of many of her
friends, it continues to put people at risk of not getting the relief they
need. “I am one of the fortunate ones,” says McGraw. “I had a doctor who did
not to hesitate to sign the forms on my behalf, given the severity of my case.”
For others, the option to use medical marijuana is impeded by the prohibition.
Although
there is a long history of marijuana activists advocating for legalization,
more recently many non-marijuana-users have been speaking out against
prohibition in Canada, which highlights the growing severity of the situation.
“For the safety of everybody, and also for economic reasons,” says Emery. “It doesn’t
make sense to continue keeping marijuana illegal.”
//Sarah Vitet, editor-in-chief
//Graphics by Faye Alexander
//Sarah Vitet, editor-in-chief
//Graphics by Faye Alexander
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