Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club celebrates its 20th anniversary

This month, the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club celebrates its 20th anniversary. 20 years of activism and 20 years of helping patients. Here's the story of its creation, by Ted Smith, its founder.

«When I moved to Victoria in September 1995 to start a chapter of Hempology 101 [available on Amazon... my main objective was hemp. With 6 generations of Canadian farmers on both sides of my family, I thought I'd support them, fight for their economic future and for the planet. I didn't have to wait long for some patients to change my destiny.

At that time, the Dennis Peron and San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club were beginning to circulate. Visit cannabis relieves nausea and pain of HIV/AIDS sufferers like no other drug. With the support of the local government, the San Francisco CBC was doing a magnificent job of raising public awareness of benefits of cannabis into an open act of civil disobedience.

That's when I started meeting patients. They told me how important cannabis was to them. In particular, I remember one young woman who was clinging to life, explaining that she couldn't live without it. I was living out of my van, going to conferences, hanging out at UVic and immersing myself in West Coast life. Feeding myself chicken broth and living in poverty for the first time in my life convinced me of the terrible effects of war on drugs and reinforced my decision to change things.

Meeting a young cook selling cannabis cookies, brownies, salves and massage oils had a huge effect on me. While I knew that cannabis and hash could be used in food, I had never thought that it could work just as well in creams. I then read Chris Bennet's book, Green Gold: Marijuana in magic and religion [also available on Amazon], I realized that this plant had been used medicinally for a long time before Jesus healed the lepers. Leslie used to volunteer with several AIDS/HIV associations, and many people came to her house to tell me how cannabis cookies helped them regain their weight and feel alive again.

At the same time, I often travelled to Vancouver to keep in touch with the movement there. Shortly after taking over as manager of Hemp BC, Hilary Black began selling cannabis to patients out the back of his store. In fact, many people across Canada were stepping outside the law to deliver cannabis to sick people, but no one had yet formed a public organization with a mandate and contact information.

It didn't take long before I realized that we needed a Cannabis Buyers Club in Victoria to ensure patients have rapid access to all forms of cannabis products. Getting authorization was no easy task, as the San Francisco CBC had very little information to help us, and Hilary decided on a case-by-case basis. Leslie and I talked for months about who to give access to, because it was very important to make sure that patients had medical problems that were serious enough to invoke constitutional protections without depriving people of access for the wrong reason. At the time, mentioning the’using cannabis as a medicine was the surest way to convince a doctor that you were a junkie, more concerned with getting high than getting well. We had to create a mandate that was fair to patients, acceptable to the public and convince the courts that using cannabis as medicine was a constitutional right.

Together, we decided to ask patients to prove that they had a written diagnosis from a doctor confirming that they had a permanent physical illness or disability. We felt that this mandate would assure all our patients with health problems that the courts would consider this sufficient to treat cannabis. as a medical necessity. By not mentioning to the doctor that the patient was going to use the club's services, we were able to protect our members from any reaction from the medical system following the possible disclosure of their use of cannabis as medicine.

In the early days, the services we provided were minimal. For many reasons, I was determined not to make money selling cannabis to the sick and dying. When I received a call on my pager, I would often visit the patient to get his money before picking up his medicine, often riding my bike to save on gas. Since I knew I could be arrested at any moment, transporting large quantities in my van seemed the best way to take a lot of risks and become a target for thieves. It was after several months that Leslie finally convinced me to take more than the cost of the drug so that the club could buy scales, a safe and the equipment we were going to need in our future showcase.

Meanwhile on the mainland [Victoria is located on an island off the coast of Vancouver], Hilary had teamed up with Theo, a young man of Hempology 101, to create the Vancouver Medical Marijuana Buyers Club with a similar mandate. Unfortunately, after a few months, Hilary left to travel in Europe and California to learn more about medical cannabis, and Theo was unable to keep the organization going. For 8 months, there was no medical cannabis organization in Vancouver, until May 1997 when Hilary returned to create the BC Compassion Club Society.

By this time, I'd been able to move into a small apartment on the edge of the city center and use it as a base. For 5 years, the Club used this small apartment, while we grew in size and resources. In March 2001, after a police raid on the building, we moved into a real store, and the rest, as they say, is history.

In the USA, the San Francisco CBC was also raided by the DEA and closed. In response, activists opened a dozen clubs around San Francisco and continued their fight. Other organizations deserving tribute in the fight to legalize medical cannabis in California include the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), a collective of gardeners who gave free cannabis to patients in need. The oldest medical cannabis collective, WAMM, also played a role in the acceptance of medical cannabis.»

The Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club has survived 20 years, 5 police raids, too many thefts, and a lot of internal unrest. The legalizing cannabis in Canada should bring some calm to this situation, while confirming the causes of Ted Smith's fight.