HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Lucknow Sentinel, 2016-12-28, Page 9Wednesday, December 28, 2016 • Lucknow Sentinel 9
Cannabis culture there for healing
Scott Dunn
Owen Sound Sun Times
This was not your ordinary
cooking class.
Barb Mahy was making
her basic "canna chocolates,"
a simple mix of semi -sweet
chocolate, coconut butter
and a cannabis tincture mix
with glycerine and water
which she melted and
poured into moulds.
About a dozen people sat
at tables and chairs to watch
the demonstration Saturday
upstairs in The Barn, a well-
ness co-operative in a refur-
bished barn along Highway
26 between Meaford and
Thornbury. Along with 20
vendors and five practition-
ers, the co-op has an educa-
tion mandate fulfilled with
events like this.
Barb's husband Rob, a tall
cannabis evangelical with
long grey hair and his own
story of how the cannabis
worked wonders on his bro-
ken back, told the group he
and others aim to help suf-
fering through "education
and respect," not smoking up
and getting high.
"And remember this,
there's a big difference
between healers and
dealers."
The Mahys are among the
founding members of
MEND, short for Mother
Earth's Natural Design, an
educational self-help group
that shares information and
know-how about medical
uses of marijuana.
Some uncounted number
of the 1,000 members have
licences to possess mari-
juana and in some cases, to
grow it, founding member
Fred Harris said.
Group members know the
different strains of the plant
and how to carefully extract
the active ingredients. They
share information through
Facebook and in cooking
classes all over Ontario.
And they never call it
marijuana, for the negative
connotations that carries.
They use plants low in THC
(the high -producing ingredi-
ent in pot) but rich in CBD or
cannabidiol, whose recog-
nized therapeutic properties
include painkilling and anti -
inflammation. The group
members don't sell products
and they offer their advice
freely.
Sherry Snider is a retired
oncology nurse who has
licences to possess and grow
cannabis. She was hit by a
car in her youth and suffered
for most of her life with knee
pain as a result. She is aller-
gic to opioids and most anti-
inflammatory drugs, she
said.
She walked with a cane for
15 years until April, when
she started rubbing "canna
butter" on her knees, which
otherwise needed to be
replaced. She also eats can-
nabis. The drug "reduced the
swelling, it reduced the pain
... and I am walking around
fairly normally."
She has taken the use of
cannabis a step further and
rubs it on melanoma spots
on her chest, she told the
meeting.
There were other attesta-
tions made at the meeting
about using pot -- on Parkin-
son's sufferers, insomniacs,
as an alternative to tradi-
tional prostate cancer treat-
ments, even lame horses and
dogs benefit, Rob Mahy said
-- by administering low
THC, high CBD cannabis.
One visitor quizzed the
MEND representatives
about how to go about using
cannabis as medicine rather
than recreationally. The
group members said they
would help her get her
licences and guide her in
how to make her own medi-
cine. Barb Mahy said she
couldn't buy their supplies.
Rob Mahy held up small
tubs of cannabis ordered
from commercial
distributors, which he
derided for not being left in
its pure, unadulterated form.
It's sold only "to put another
Bimmer in the parking lot,"
he said, railing against the
commercialization of the
product. "It's about cash:'
Better to grow the strain
which works best for you,
and make the medicine
yourself, he said.
But getting medical mari-
juana licences isn't easy,
Mahy said with growing
indignation. "And there are
very few doctors in this area
that know anything about it.
So how can we get, without a
licence, to heal if you can't
even get a doctor that
knows?
"We have to drive people
all the way to Toronto, just to
get them started through this
program, paperwork and
malarky and it creates so
much anxiety for people that
we finally decided this is
Meaford. Around here, we
do it for ourselves.
"We help our friends and
family and we are going to
continue to do it ..." which
brought a "Here! Here!" from
Gary Pallister, a man at the
back of the room who was
credited with helping Mahy
with his back by sharing can-
nabis tincture seven years
ago.
Pallister said in an inter-
view he spent six months
under house arrest as part of
a conditional sentence after
he was charged in 2009 with
illegal production, posses-
sion for the purpose of traf-
ficking and simple posses-
sion of marijuana. His case
included an appeal to the
Supreme Court of Canada,
which was dismissed.
If not everyone has a
licence, where do people get
the marijuana? That ques-
tion went mostly unan-
swered during the meeting.
"I would guess most of the
product comes from Crown
land," Snider said when
asked.
That may change to some
degree for medicinal users in
the spring.
Last week, the federal gov-
ernment's advisory commit-
tee on the regulated legal
access to marijuana pre-
sented more than 80 recom-
mendations before the drug
is made legal for recreational
use this spring, in keeping
with Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau's election cam-
paign promise.
The committee recom-
mends allowing people 18
years and older to possess
up to 30 grams of non-medi-
cal pot and grow up to four
plants per residence or if
they wish, buy it in a store-
front or by mail order, to dis-
place the illicit market for
pot.
Rob Mahy offered faint
praise for the federal govern-
ment's intentions, which he
believes are focussed on the
recreational pot user. But he
allowed the recommenda-
tions "are all basically bene-
ficial to allowing us to make
up our own minds about
what we do."
Pallister called it "wonder-
ful" but said the recommen-
dation would have been bet-
ter if six plants could be
grown instead of four.
Snider expressed concern
that the government's focus
on pot for people who smoke
it to get high, which she said
negates many positive
medicinal properties in the
process, will make it difficult
to access the plant varieties
with low psychoactive ingre-
dient levels.
She believes there will still
be a licensing system for
medical uses of marijuana,
regardless of what happens
to the changes to laws for
recreational use.
"What the committee
report is going to help us
with is easier access for peo-
ple who need medical edi-
bles," she said.
POLICE BRIEFS
Horse-drawn
buggy tips over in
Grey Highlands
Nobody was injured after a
horse-drawn vehicle carrying
a family of six tipped in Grey
Highlands on Sunday.
Just after 5 p.m., Grey County
OPP received a report of peo-
ple running down Grey Road
4, chasing a horse pulling a
tipped carriage.
The horse-drawn vehicle was
having difficulty maneuver-
ing through the snow and ice,
causing the carriage to tip and
the Grey Highlands family fell
out of it, police said in a news
release.
The horse was eventually
located unharmed.
In another incident involving
a horse-drawn vehicle, two
youths were injured after a
collision in Southgate on Dec.
12.
Grey County OPP responded
to the collision between the
horse-drawn vehicle and a
2014 Ford F-150 pick-up truck
on Southgate Sideroad 73 at
approximately 3:15 p.m.
An 11 -year-old Southgate boy
who was operating the horse-
drawn vehicle and a 14 -year-
old Southgate boy who was
a passenger, were taken to
hospital with non -life threat-
ening injuries. The horse was
unharmed.
The 30 -year-old woman from
Grey Highlands who was driv-
ing the pick-up and three
young passengers, age 9, 5
and 2, were not injured.
There were no charges
in the incident.
James Masters/Owen Sound Sun Times
Fred Harris, left, holding a home made cannabis tincture, Sherry
Snider, center, and Rob Mahy, right, holding a cannabis butter
are members the group M.E.N.D.+ mother earth's natural design
who took part in a Medicinal Cannabis workshop at the Barn Co-
operative Network in Meaford on Saturday
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