September 20, 1999

In a little over two years, Vancouver’s Compassion Club, founded by my good friend Hilary Black, has grown from an office located next door to a chicken processing plant to an attractive resource for almost 900 British Columbians with a wide variety of medical problems.

The club is now located in a pleasant plant-filled (house-plant, that is) facility on a busy street on a corner by one of Vancouver’s many parks.

The Club provides its members with very reasonably priced cannabis in a range of grades, but all of it suitable for medical patients.

And yes, members can smoke on the premises.

The Club is more than just a dispensary for medical cannabis. It takes a holistic approach to healing and also offers its members other herbs, as well as the services of an acupuncturist and other healing modalities at a "wellness center." It is staffed a dedicated group of people.

While in most of DEAland -- and most of Canada, too – sick people and their care providers have to worry about narks and other dangerous elements to find medical marijuana, in Vancouver the patients and the club staff feel perfectly safe.

Indeed, the biggest problem that they have is that they have grown so much that they are confronting the challenges of all fast growing businesses, overextended management and finances. This is the kind of problem that clubs elsewhere would welcome.

In Vancouver, the police generally do not arrest and the courts do not prosecute people for simple possession of marijuana. In this context, a well-run Compassion Club is recognized as asset for the community.

Meanwhile in Ottawa, Health Canada is "studying" medical marijuana and in neighboring Alberta the sick and dying live in fear of the police.
See
Health Canada To Spend Five Years and Millions
Playing the Research Game Trying Avoid Medical Marijuana

The reality of what Hilary and her friends have accomplished here should be studied by Ottawa and by prohibitionists everywhere.

In light of the recent Federal court ruling on medical necessity, the DEAland medical marijuana movement in the states to the south of B. C. will flourish and may soon be able to operate as openly as it does here.

The greatest puzzle is why Ottawa keeps stalling and thereby depriving the rest of Canada the obvious benefits that are provided by the BCCCS.

For more on the Vancouver club see (www.thecompassionclub.org )
and see
Meanwhile In Vancouver, The Supply Problem Seems To Have Been Solved
and
Vancouver Leads The Way On Medical Marijuana;
Compassion Club Attorney Will Encourage Class Action Suits,
If Health Minister Does Not Move Faster.
and
Vancouver Compassion Club Featured In 2 Stories