Medical pot users hold ‘smoke-in’ at cop shop

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This article was published 20/07/2015 (3728 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg medical cannabis users took their fight for a local dispensary to the police’s front door today, staging a peaceful protest “smoke-in” at the WPS headquarters.

At 11 a.m. on Monday, medical marijuana users and supporters met at the Public Safety Building for a demonstration advocating for a Winnipeg dispensary. Police asked the owner of Your Medical Cannabis Headquarters at 1404 Main St. to stop selling cannabis last Tuesday, just two weeks after he started.

“We’re not here to disrupt anything,” said shop-owner Glenn Price at the demonstration. Price’s shop is the only medical cannabis dispensary in Manitoba.“We just want to be heard.”

After being visited by police twice last week and asked to stop selling his product, Price halted sales for a few days. While he said he sells exclusively to prescription-holding adults who go through an assessment process with the shop, Price does not have a licence from Health Canada to sell cannabis, meaning his operation is illegal. However, he has vowed to resume selling on Tuesday morning when the store opens at 11 a.m.

Steven Stairs, a Winnipeg medical cannabis user and Green Party hopeful, organized the protest. He said the goal of the event was to start a conversation about medical marijuana use and stigmas, and to show police and the public the breadth of local support.

“Technically, what (Price) is doing is illegal. However, history has shown that sometimes unjust laws need to be broken in a public way to make the point for the social change,” Stairs said. “Hopefully we’re going to make not only the police department but the public aware of the situation.”

One protester present was Duke Moose, a Winnipeg man who was badly injured when he was hit by a car five years ago. The accident left Moose with protrusions, displacement and torn ligaments and nerves in his spine, and he said he was “immediately” prescribed 100 Percocets a month – which quickly increased to 250 per month – in addition to OxyContin and morphine. The prescriptions triggered a struggle with addiction Moose said he only shook with the use of medical marijuana.

”My whole life, I’ve tried smoking marijuana and it’s never been for me, I’ve always actually kind of been against it — until I actually needed it and wanted an alternative, and it worked,” Moose said. “I successfully got off of all of the pills that I was taking that was destroying my body and keeping me from doing the things I needed to do.”

Moose said the reason he and other medical cannabis users need a dispensary is simple: “access.”

“People need access to medicine without having to go through mail or send our money to another province,” he said. “(Medical cannabis) patients have to wait days before their meds come in, or use the criminal element.” Moose said the ease of buying marijuana through illegal dealers could be “appealing” to those who get sick of the delays associated with Health Canada’s approved mail-order system to get cannabis, or who don’t like the cannabis pills that can be accessed at some pharmacies.

Police spokesman Const. Jason Micalyshen said police would not be commenting on the ongoing investigation into Price’s shop.

Stairs has also organized an event for Tuesday, when patients will form a human chain in front of Price’s store to prevent any police from entering.