April 30, 2010 – GLOBAL MARIJUANA MARCH – On May 1 (not April 20th, as many assume), potheads around the city will unite for the flagship event of Toronto Freedom Festival: the Global Marijuana March (GMM). Although these marches take place in 200 cities worldwide, Toronto’s edition is the largest of its kind. The event is sponsored by Cannabis As Living Medicine (C.A.L.M.), which provided safe access to the drug for Canadians with significant medical need until it closed after a controversial raid by Toronto Police in March. Prior to this, C.A.L.M. was the oldest and largest compassion organization. As a result, according to the GMM website, 2,500 people are now without access to their medicine.

The march, now in its 12th year, is a peaceful one. The route goes north from Queen’s Park to Bloor. It will then turn east onto Yonge Street, south to Wellesley and back west towards Queen’s Park for the 420 Countdown, which features DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill on the main stage. If you miss him then, catch him at the after-party at the Great Hall at midnight. The event will be grand-marshalled by Marc Emery. The march will also serve to raise awareness and support for preventing his extradition to the US for the drug distribution charge to which he’s already pleaded guilty.

People are expected to congregate around noon in Queen’s Park to get ready for the 2pm march. Last year over 20,000 people participated.

SPEAKER’S STAGE
The Toronto Freedom Festival’s Speaker’s Stage starts May 1 with a talk on Alternative Medicine from 12:30 to 2pm. Among the speakers is the young visionary, Darren Austin Hall, a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine who aims to spread the core ideas about physical health and the inner world of psyche and spirit. Patrick Moughenda Mikala, a Shaman (healer) for over 25 years, uses ancient traditional African spiritual practices and specializes in the use of various plants and herbs to heal problems ranging from addiction issues to psychological traumas. Accompanying him is Julia Malone, an architectural designer and currently the director of the Iboga House, one of Mikala’s centres located in Costa Rica. Also speaking will be activist Marc-Boris Saint-Maurice, founder of the Bloc Pot, a provincial political party in Quebec that aims for the decriminalization and legalization of marijuana; Alison Myrden from the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition; and Marco Renda, the editor-in-chief of Treating Yourself – The Alternative Medicine, a medical marijuana forum online.

Following the talks on alternative medicine will be a Poetry Slam, which happens in two parts from 2 to 3pm and from 5:45 to 6:30pm. At 4:30pm the event will also feature The Conspiracy Culture Hour whose speakers include Richard Syrett, the host and creator of “The Conspiracy Show,” a weekly hour-long radio show. Slated to be a TV series, the show delves into conspiracy theories, paranormal events, unexplained mysteries, secret archaeology and suppressed science. Joining him will be Nelson Thall, a.k.a. “Lenny Bloom,” one of the first Canadian investigators involved in the JFK assassination, along with investigative journalist Dan Dicks and documentary filmmaker Bryan Law.

“Prince of Pot” Marc Emery, Canada’s most notable cannabis advocate, will speak at the session along with Ron Marzel, a lawyer for C.A.L.M. who is committed to providing access and education on all aspects of the provision of cannabis to those with medical need. » VEENA SUNDERAM

April 30, 2010 – CLEARWATER — Arthritis attacks his neck and shoulders. Painful spasms ripple across his crippled body. Imaginary needles stab his useless feet.

John Haring has lived with the chronic pain since becoming a quadriplegic two decades ago. Then he found a way, he said, to ease his aching body, to lift his depression.

Now he’s going to jail for it.

Haring, 45, was caught growing his own marijuana, a remedy he says he turned to after prescription painkillers wrecked his body and mind. Legal narcotics leave him drugged, depressed and in an angry stupor, he said.

“Sometimes I just want to end it all,” Haring said. “But when I smoke it’s like the world’s lifted off my shoulders, it’s like I can deal with what I have to deal with in this wheelchair.”

But Florida law doesn’t allow the medicinal use of marijuana and likely won’t anytime soon. Haring’s only legal means of relief is to start using narcotics again.

If he doesn’t and the state catches him with marijuana again, he could go to prison.

• • •

Haring’s plight comes as more and more Americans favor legalizing the medicinal use of marijuana.

According to a recent Associated Press-CNBC poll, 60 percent of Americans support the use of medicinal marijuana.

The Marijuana Policy Project says 14 states allow medicinal marijuana and a dozen more are considering such laws.

But not Florida. A proposed amendment to the state constitution to legalize medicinal marijuana failed to get on the November ballot. There are no bills in the legislature for it, either.

Bruce D. Grant, director of the state Office of Drug Control, said he personally opposes legalizing medicinal marijuana.

“It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he said. “It is a subterfuge in order to get marijuana legalized.”

Indeed, 55 percent of Americans still oppose making marijuana legal for everyone, according to the AP-CNBC poll.

The Marijuana Policy Project does, in fact, support widespread legalization. But spokesman Mike Meno pointed to mounting scientific evidence that marijuana can relieve the pain and symptoms of debilitating illnesses such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis without the side effects of prescription narcotics.

“It’s tragic that Florida is one of 36 states where patients are still treated as criminals,” Meno said, “if marijuana is the medicine that works best for them.”

• • •

Haring was a 24-year-old truck driver in Ohio when a kid pulled out in front of his 18-wheeler on March 21, 1989. He rolled his rig trying to avoid him.

The cab’s roof collapsed onto Haring’s forehead. He dislocated his C6 vertebrae and fractured C7. Soon he regained the use of his arms and hands — but not his fingers, and not his legs.

“It’s like taking a 24-year-old man and sticking him back in a baby’s body,” he said.

The accident robbed him of mobility, not the ability to feel pain. He was prescribed narcotic painkillers and muscle-relaxers, later antidepressants.

“We didn’t want to be around him when he was on the narcotics,” said his mother, Melissa Morrow, 66. “No one wanted to be around him.”

A therapist showed Haring another — albeit illegal — way to cope. “He told me if I ever wanted to survive I had to get off these pills,” he said. “We left the hospital and burnt that night. Pretty much I’ve been smoking ever since.”

• • •

Haring started growing his own marijuana in his Clearwater home.

Smoking pot allowed him to live his life, he said. He could drive his pickup and earn extra money hauling boats and classic cars. He had relationships again. Five years ago, he had children of his own, twins Logan and Sonona.

“I can stand up and fight or give up,” Haring said. “Marijuana wants me to fight. The pills want me to give up.”

But it looks like he may have to give up. Haring has been arrested twice in as many years for cultivating marijuana. He was caught with 41 plants in 2007 and three times that many in 2009.

In 2007, Haring told the police he sold marijuana for extra money, but he was never charged with that offense. The first case was dropped after he completed a pretrial intervention program.

A year after the arrest, Haring said he started growing pot again. This latest arrest will send him to jail for 90 days, then he has to serve three years of drug offender probation.

That means drug-testing. A failed test will land him in front of a judge, facing up to five years in prison. It’s part of what Haring’s attorney called a lenient plea bargain approved last week.

Does it make sense to lock up a man in a wheelchair? Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe said his office mitigated Haring’s sentence because his medical condition is legitimate, and there were no allegations of drug dealing in this latest arrest. But Haring is going to jail, the state attorney said, because he broke the law again.

“There has to be some consequence in my view,” McCabe said.

• • •

Marijuana came with a cost for Haring. The mother of his children moved them away in 2007. She feared losing their children if Haring got caught, which he did.

But prescription drug abuse also poses a growing problem. Prescription drugs kill six Floridians a day, the state said, and the number of deaths is increasing at five times the rate of illegal drugs.

Haring’s attorney, John Trevena, questions the wisdom of laws that force his client to take more powerful and dangerous drugs.

“They take away from him the one thing that has worked and force him to take something more toxic,” Trevena said. “There’s no logic to it.” By Jamal Thalji. Source.