Nicole Seguin's blog

By Candice So, Ottawa Citizen With Files From Zev Singer

A coalition representing local sex trade workers is urging Ottawa police to stop cracking down on prostitutes in monthly sting operations.

The group's open letter to police was sent in response to the warning Chief Vern White issued in December, saying investigators had detected a pattern in the deaths of a number of sex trade workers. The police also issued a safety advisory, advising sex workers to work in teams and to avoid isolated areas. Read more »

BY CHARLIE FIDELMAN, THE GAZETTE

The first thing patients get in the vestibule of a hidden Montreal medical marijuana centre is a wail-tagging welcome from a rescue border collie called Maybe.

The inner sanctum - kitchen with stainless steel appliances and banner featuring a dove carrying a marijuana leaf - has a faint odour of pot.

The baking menu on this day includes pumpkin honey cannabis cake using marijuana-infused olive oil.

Welcome to a reincarnation of the Montreal compassion club, which has rejected "compassion" in favour of "dispensary" because patients have a right to medication, says Adam Greenblatt, head of the Montreal Medical Cannabis Access Society. Read more »

BY GLEN MCGREGOR, POSTMEDIA NEWS

Chris Hillier’s life arc bottomed out in a Vancouver back alley, across the country from his Newfoundland home and a world away from the war zone that broke him.

Homeless, penniless, and addicted to crack cocaine, Hillier slept behind a community centre, at the intersection of Hastings and Main, the notorious epicentre of the city’s drug trade.

Three years earlier, Hillier was in the midst of a successful military career, serving his country as an air force firefighter aboard HMCS Preserver in the Middle East in the months after the 9/11 strikes on the U.S. Read more »

BY JODIE SINNEMA, POSTMEDIA NEWS

EDMONTON — Janice Cyre is married to “an old hippie.”

But it wasn’t until six years ago, when she was in her mid-50s and had a fibromyalgia attack so severe no conventional medications could touch it, that she finally felt comfortable smoking a joint herself.

She almost coughed her lungs out.

But her husband wasn’t about to give up, convinced the anti-inflammatory compounds in marijuana could help Cyre with the constant aches and the sharp pains. Pharmaceutical anti-inflammatories pushed Cyre’s blood pressure to levels so high her doctor wondered why she didn’t have a stroke.

After some experimentation with vaporizing the marijuana, Cyre and her husband, Bob, who can also legally use marijuana for severe arthritis, settled on tea. Read more »

BY JODIE SINNEMA, POSTMEDIA NEWS Published in Vancouver Sun

Terry Bremner smokes his marijuana pipe in Halifax parking lots and quiet woods, even though he is legally allowed cannabis to dull the pain associated with fibromyalgia.

Until now, his two adult sons didn’t know. His neighbours didn’t know. The parents of the seven- and eight-year-old football players he coaches didn’t know. He masks the pungent smell of pot with gum, cigars and cologne.

But he thinks it’s time to speak up against the stigma so prevalent on the East Coast and in Canada against marijuana that lumps medical patients with recreational users. Read more »

BY GLEN MCGREGOR, POSTMEDIA NEWS

OTTAWA - Eighteen-year-old Adam Greenblatt was lying in bed one morning when his mother burst into his room and demanded to know if he had any drugs.

Greenblatt, who had been busted for possession while smoking up with some friends outside his high school in suburban Toronto, thought his mom was hassling him about pot again.

But this time was different.

Adam's father wanted to give marijuana a try, his mother said. Get out your dope, she told him.

Michael Greenblatt, a dentist, had suffered from multiple sclerosis since his late 30s. The neurological condition left him with a twisted arm and unable to practise dentistry. Read more »

BY GLEN MCGREGOR, OTTAWA CITIZEN

He is 47 years old and, chances are, he lives somewhere on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.

Under Health Canada’s medical marijuana program, he is approved to legally consume up to five grams a day of the pot he grows himself at home. Most likely, his general practitioner signed the forms he needed to get the drug.

And on average, he is a “he” — men in the program outnumber women by a ratio of about three to one.

As with a great number of medical marijuana patients, he uses the drug to treat severe arthritis, although he may suffer from other conditions. Read more »

BY JODIE SINNEMA, POSTMEDIA NEWS Published in Montreal Gazette

Margaret Marceniuk inhales her medical marijuana through a pharmaceutical puffer and a headshop pipe.

Tamara Cartwright vaporizes her pot with a machine called a Volcano, then inhales three to four bags of the vapour while locked away in her bedroom, away from her toddler.

Ian Layfield in Victoria swallows cannabis-infused oil capsules he makes himself, frying olive oil with pot leaves, then straining it with cheese cloth and pouring it into gel caps. He also mixes cannabis into a topical cream he rubs into his left foot and ankle, which was crushed in October 2006 after being rolled over by a grader. Read more »

BY ADAM GREENBLATT, FREELANCE Montreal Gazette

In 2003, I started bringing pot home from school for my dad.

He had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1985. My family struggled alongside him as MS took its painful toll. His galaxy of pills did little but turn him into a zombie.

Eighteen years later, he discovered cannabis. I procured it for him from my high school, where it was - and remains - ubiquitous. What began as a clandestine therapy of last resort soon became his front-line treatment.

Today, a regimen of cannabis-infused foods helps him control pain, spasms and nausea. It lifts his spirits, perks up his appetite and helps him sleep. The side effects are negligible, especially compared to those of some of his legal medications, which twice nearly killed him. Read more »

CBC News

An advocacy group for sex-trade workers in Halifax has launched a poster campaign designed to humanize their image, as a man faces charges for allegedly brutalizing a prostitute and murdering another.

Rene Ross, executive director of Stepping Stone, said the goal is to show that sex workers are everyday people.

"They are somebody's mother, brother, daughter … and they're not just whores, tramps, hookers, which is what labels society has given them," she told CBC News.

One poster features an image of a grandmother with the caption, "I am proud of my tramp for raising two kids on her own."

In another poster, a young woman is paired with the phrase, "I'm glad my prostitute made me finish school." Read more »