Bud Life. Quick Hits, Growin' Our Own and Pipeline. Page 3.

Quick Hits (page 3)

Medical marijuana access regulations are unconstitutional

By: James McCarten (Canadian Press)

TORONTO (CP) - A group of seriously ill people has won the first battle in an ongoing war with Ottawa over a scheme to permit the use of medical marijuana the patients say violates their constitutional rights.

An Ontario judge agreed Thursday that the federal government's Medical Marijuana Access Regulations are unconstitutional because they prevent more deserving people from exemption than they permit. The ruling from Ontario's Superior Court is binding on lower courts, subject to an appeal, and will likely wreak further havoc on the laws in Canada that make possession of marijuana illegal, said lawyer Alan Young.

"We sued the government, saying their regulatory regime for medical people was unsound," said lawyer Alan Young. "The judge agreed, saying they have six months to address it or they lose the law."

The regulations give eligible people an exemption from provisions of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the law which makes possession of pot illegal for everyone else.

Unless Ottawa appeals the ruling or comes up with a new medical-marijuana regime within six months, that law will fall, Young said.

"The law will be dead in Ontario," he said. "There will be no further questions about that."

Young argued in court last year that the regulations demand medical declarations that few doctors are willing to provide given the legal consequences.

They also make it impossible for a doctor to recommend a dosage, since the drug remains unregulated in Canada.

Even those who do win a legal exemption - more than 300 people in Canada are currently permitted by Ottawa to smoke pot for medical reasons - are forced to break the law, resorting to black-market weed because the government is dragging its heels on efforts to cultivate a pure supply for clinical trial.

There were seven marijuana consumers included in Young's group of applicants, along with a caregiver, the Toronto Compassion Centre. Three other applicants are also participating in the hearings.

There was no immediate word Thursday on whether the ruling forces the government to make available the marijuana it grew in a Manitoba mineshaft under a $5.7-million contract for clinical trials.

Federal Health Minister Anne McLellan had refused to allow the marijuana to be distributed because she says it simply isn't pure enough.

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Growin' Our Own (page 3)

Oh, shit

By: Sister Rose

Some people call me a hippie. I'm not. Not really. You see, I was much too young to make the scene in Haight-Ashbury in the sixties. Wish I had been there, but, oh well! What I actually am is ecology minded. I wear clothes made from natural cotton or hemp, I like my food to be natural and organic. I demonstrated against the genetically altered corn and growth hormones for beef. Not that I eat meat - nasty stuff! Humans should NOT alter what nature has provided, that's all. And I think you'll agree that nature has provided us some wondrous things. Take marijuana (no, really, please take some - it will make you feel better!) Nature has given us a perfect medicine to combat pain and increase appetite. I despise the feds for trying to stop us from helping people with natural medicine! They are trying to do away with all the co-ops that provide this medicine to sick folks, the bastards. They bust people, rip up gardens - you know the gig. Well, we got around it for a while!

A few years ago (very few), my life partner and I had a baby. A sweet little bundle from heaven that helped us bring bundles of sweet heaven into the U.S. from Mexico. We had family that lived in the interior of Mexico. They moved there when the cost of living got really high here, and the cops wouldn't let them 'live out' (ed. note - in a park or National Forest) anymore. We lived in Boulder Creek, California at that time. Boulder Creek is in the Santa Cruz mountains just above Santa Cruz. We visited our relatives in Mexico at least once each month, to bring them news of home and family, and to just have a good time. We had an older Chevy van with no seats in the back, so we would put a mattress in it and sleep there when we visited. The Border Patrol got used to seeing us come through on our way to our relatives' place, then come back through again three or four days later headed back to Boulder Creek. The first few trips they really searched the van to the nth degree when we came back, but they never found anything. We weren't stupid, and we weren't bringing so much as a seed into the States. It got to the point where they would just smile and wave when they saw us.

When I got pregnant traveling became a little more difficult. I needed more potty stops. The first time I asked the Border Patrol guys if I could use their bathroom, and explained why, they were very helpful. They told me it was against the rules, though, so to make sure I stopped in town before we got to the border. However, they wanted to know when the baby was due, and if we would be bringing her down to visit our relatives in Mexico. They said to make sure we stopped when we brought her down so they could see her.

When I was about eight months along, they did stop us and ask if we planned to have the baby in Mexico. I told them no, I had another month to go yet, but that we probably wouldn't go down the next month because the timing of the trip would fall right around the baby's due date. They seemed relieved. I tell you, it was almost like having another entire family there!

Well, our precious little girl was born pretty much on schedule, thank you LaMaze! Healthy, perfect in every way, not one to cry all the time, just a joy to have! We did all the normal things that new parents do, I guess ... call everyone in the world we even vaguely knew to brag, jumped every time she hiccuped or looked cross-eyed, convinced ourselves she was going to save the world and bring peace and harmony to the universe single-handedly, you know - the usual b.s. that parents do. We were no different there. We did do some things a little differently than a lot of parents do nowadays, though. I breast fed her so she wouldn't have that canned formula crap. I didn't (and still don't) like the idea of disposable diapers clogging landfills, so we used all cotton cloth diapers, even though that meant daily loads of wash and hanging them up to dry. The extra work was worth it - she never had diaper rash once!

About a month after she was born it was time once again for our trip to see the relatives in Mexico. We stopped at the border, of course, and introduced our new daughter to the Border Patrol people. They were thrilled! They cooed and petted and just generally made over her like she was a little princess. We had the side door on the van open, so they saw the ubiquitous diaper pail we carried with us. We wound up talking to them about half an hour about the advantages of natural fibers on a baby's skin, and not polluting with disposable diapers. They thought we were out of our minds for going to the extra trouble of using cloth diapers. People like that ... well, that's another story.

We arrived at our relatives' home and were greeted with a big 'birthday' party for our daughter. They even bought her a handmade bassinet with carrying handles made by the basket weavers in town. We had such a good time, and our relatives always had the best smoke! While the baby slept and we smoked we bemoaned what was happening in Santa Cruz, San Francisco and elsewhere with the pot co-ops. That was when mu uncle, who HAD lived in the Haight as a band member in the sixties, came up with the idea of us taking marijauna back home. We were very, very leery of smuggling - we had a child we could lose. He said it was a perfect set up because of the baby. He told us to not wash the last couple of day's worth of the baby's diapers, and he'd show us how it would work.

When we were ready to leave, my uncle came out to the van with several tightly wrapped plastic packages. He explained that the bricks of pot were triple wrapped to avoid leakage. He then dumped all the dirty diapers out on an outside table in the yard, dropped the plastic bundles in the bottom of the diaper pail and scraped the dirty diapers back in on top of them. He said there wasn't a person in the Border Patrol that was going to dig through peed, shitty diapers to look for anything. Not only that, the urine smell would keep drug dogs from finding the bricks as well if they happened to use a dog. He said we were probably above suspicion anyway, because we'd taken the time to get to know the guards. He told us to try it and see how easy it was. He asked only that we send him half of any cash we made selling the stuff. Selling? Yes, he said, at least half of this stuff had to be sold because he had to pay his farmers who supplied it to him. Well, I didn't like that too much, but my life partner looked at it from a purely business aspect and said okay. My life partner told me on the way home we could use our half of the money to donate to legal defense funds and so on, so we could help there too, as well as supplying medicine to those who needed it the worst. That made me feel much better.

When we got to the border they stopped us. My heart almost stopped as well. As it turned out, they just wanted to see the baby again, then waved us through without even looking at the van.

After we emptied the diaper pail at home we found that we had fifteen bricks in the bottom. At 2.2 pounds each, that was thirty-three pounds of pot! We put seven bricks right back in that pail, with dirty diapers on top, and went to a friend's house. He was jubilant! He supplied several patients with medicine, and was nearly out - our stuff couldn't have come at a better time. We explained to him that we had more, but had to sell it to pay for all of it. He said he could help with that as well, and he did.

Well, the end of the story is that our daughter grew out of diapers at the age of fourteen months, so we had to stop bringing our goodies back from Uncle's house. The new story will begin in another five months or so - I'm pregnant again! At the rate of thirty-three pounds per month for twelve or thirteen months, we could bring in another four hundred or so pounds to help our friends!

Update: I just got home from an appointment with my doctor. He thinks I'm carrying twins this time. Oh, shit! Time to get another diaper pail!

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Pipeline (page 3)

Feds track patients' drug use

By: R. Joseph Gelarden

Information about drugs such as Vicodin, among the prescriptions tracked by police, is shared with drug enforcement agencies.

In 17 states, including Michigan, police keep lists of everyone who buys high-powered painkillers and other potentially addictive drugs prescribed by doctors.

They collect the information with the permission of a little-known law that requires pharmacists to send them patients' names, the drug they are taking, the name of their doctors and even the number of pills they receive.

This means that whenever you have a prescription filled for Schedule II drugs, such as Percodan, Vicodin or Lorcet -- and in some states Schedule III drugs such as anabolic steroids or Ketamine, or familiar Schedule IV drugs like Xanax, Valium, or the "date rape" drug Rohypnol, plus needles and syringes -- a record with your name on it is created and shared with a number of agencies.

It is all part of a computerized electronic tracking system used by the states in a federal program to help police and medical licensing agencies bust prescription drug abuses.

Schedule II drugs also include familiar painkillers such as Demerol, Percocet and the powerful OxyContin; street drugs such as cocaine and meth; and even Ritalin.

Nationally, the program is called the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. California was the first state to implement the program, in 1940; Kentucky was the most recent to join, in 1999. Police say the program is one of the key tools used to catch drug abusers and the doctors and pharmacists who provide the drugs.

In Indiana, the program is being used in the Drug Enforcement Administration's ongoing investigation of local physicians and pharmacies suspected of providing excessive prescriptions for painkillers. Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay and a handful of his associates are expected to be questioned in the investigation -- even though the National Football League and Irsay's lawyer said they don't believe the team's owner is a target. Irsay has said he sought treatment for addiction to prescription painkillers.

John Krull, Indiana Civil Liberties Union executive director, said the system could put citizens' privacy at risk.

"Anytime people's privacy is violated, especially on a systemic basis, it is a concern," he said. "What if you are battling cancer and have beaten the odds and survived, but are in constant pain? Does your legitimate use of painkillers cause you to become the object of an investigation? In a free society, government should be accountable to the citizenry. More and more, the citizen is being held accountable to the government."

Les Miller, special counsel for Indiana State Police Superintendent Mel Carraway, said the monitoring program helps stop prescription drug abuse. "We need a means of tracking prescriptions for Schedule II drugs because they are subject to abuse," he said. "We could use it to build a case, to look at trends, to catch information about a doctor, a pharmacy or an individual. It is another piece of information that goes into the mix."

The information collected in the database includes:

The patient's name.
His or her date of birth.
Date the drug is dispensed.
Quantity of the drug.
Number of days supply dispensed.
Whether the prescription was phoned in or presented in writing.

The law allows public access to statistical reports only.

A Web site for the Diversion Control Program (www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov), of which the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program is a part, is packed with information about national and local cases, though names of suspected drug abusers are not included. (Investigators can track a case if needed.)

In one report on the site, the DEA reported that one Indiana woman was so addicted to hydrocodone (codeine) that she had all her teeth pulled just so she could get prescriptions filled at different Indiana pharmacies.

In another case, troopers found one patient was receiving 2,500 doses of a high-powered painkiller per month from one doctor. Before the case was completed, the drug abuser was killed.

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