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Goderich Signal Star, 2017-01-04, Page 1110 Signal Star • Wednesday, January 4, 2017 Cannabis culture Scott Dunn Postmedia 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 Bam, a wellness co-operative in a refurbished barn along Highway 26 between Meaford and Thom - bury. Along with 20 vendors and five practitioners, the co-op has an education mandate ful- filled 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 mari- juana, for the negative conno- tations that carries. They use plants low in THC (the high - producing ingredient in pot) but rich in CBD or cannabid- iol, whose recognized thera- peutic properties include painkilling and anti -inflam- mation. 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 allergic 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 ere for healing attest 1'tions made at the meeting about using pot -- on Parkinson's sufferers, insom- niacs, as an alternative to tra- ditional 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 distribu- tors, 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 commer- cialization 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 INDIAN RIVER DIRECT CITRUS TRUCKLOAD SALE ODE SATURDAY JANUARY - 7TH 10:00AM-12:00 NOON Microage Basics (223 Huron Rd) Florida$4gi Florida Seedless Ruby Red Navel Oranges 20 LB B0.Xi Grapefruits 20 LB B0� $35, ww w.indianriv erdirect.coin -1 Qd 11, La W 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 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 question went mostly unanswered 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 - CH1 Canada's prettiest town CHRISTMAS TREE RECYCLING Please drop your Christmas tree off at the Public Works Yard in the yard waste bunker 361 Cambridge St During working hours 8:00 — 4:00 Monday to Friday by Tuesday, January 10th Please Remove Tree Bags paign promise. The committee recom- mends allowing people 18 years and older to possess up to 30 grams of non-medical pot and grow up to four plants per residence or if they wish, buy it in a storefront or by mail order, to displace 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 recommendations "are all basically beneficial 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.