Dispensaries = Pharmacies; Congrats to the Black Market

On behalf of the millions of legal and illegal medicinal cannabis patients across Canada,
I'd like to offer my congratulations to the black market marijuana dealers.  You won for now.

I can imagine you're busy busy little beavers.  Weighing out dime bag grams of some sorta Kush, the most popular street strain.  You know they'll sell lickity-split because now you have a captive audience.  Or shall I say, once again you have us right where you want us.  And hey, I don't hate you all, I mean y'gotta get it somewhere.

You see, Canada has a Cannabis program yet it remains federally illegal.  I just became legal myself and I sit here perched on the fence between legal and illegal.  The bud I'm using is illicit, yet next week when my order from bedrocan comes in, it will be licit.  Same plant.  Different legalities.  The only real difference being, whom I paid the money to.  It doesn't take a white coat to grow this plant.

It is said that over 50% of the country takes five or more prescriptions per day.  Imagine for a moment if you could only get those prescriptions via the internet or by telephone, delivered by snail-mail to your canada post mail box.  Instead of speaking face-to-face with a human who can help you understand those five medications, you can only do that over the phone.  And even then, you'll soon realize that you're not speaking to anyone who has specialty in this field of prescription medicine. Seems crazy doesn't it?  But that's what I'm expected to do now that I'm part of the MMPR.

For all intents and purposes, dispensaries = pharmacies.  Like a pharmacy, those shops that have now been shut down in Toronto, dispense medicine to people who need it.  I may not agree with their 'pushing the envelope' way of starting up, but that action is a side effect.  The actions that allegedly had them shut is also a side effect.  And those side effects needs to be studied.

Our family doctors know nothing about Cannabis.  Health Canada doesn't teach them on it, doesn't recognize it as a medicine, and they don't really encourage the signing of patients into this supreme court mandated program.  Therefore, sick individuals who find relief with this plant are faced with never finding a Doctor to make them legal.  Do you really think any of us like being 'criminals'? Many of us finally feel human again with this plant and now we're not human, we're criminal.

The MMPR is a broken program.  In order to take part you need a doctor, but doctors to sign are hard to find.  If you do find one and become legal, you're only considered legal if you're ingesting product sold to you by the Licensed Producers.  Dispensaries can do more than the LP's can.  Dispensaries humanize things.  The LP's know this, which is why we're seeing mobile units starting to tour around the countryside.  I deserve to be allowed to walk downtown and buy this medicine from a human.

Back to Toronto, consider it this way:  today the black market and the Toronto Police Department agreed on what action to take.  The Police just did them a huge favour.  In the next weeks, those people on the streets are going to get rich.  After all, illness doesn't take a back seat to bureaucratic bullshit and capitalism.  Cancer doesn't take a time-out because we have to do studies.  Crohn's doesn't stop being a pain in the ass for thousands simply because we're not sure if smoking this plant should be allowed.

There are so many ways to look at this situation, not the least of which are investments lost.  In the end, a quick google search will show you, the harm to the public is closing down these shops.  It's in the public interest and safety to regulate and integrate dispensaries into the business economy in every city.  We're not going to stop using the plant that gave our lives back.  We're just not.