Wide range of medical marijuana users find relief in pot, despite government misgivings

By Jodie Sinnema, Postmedia News

 
EDMONTON — Margaret Marceniuk inhales her medical marijuana through a pharmaceutical puffer and a head-shop 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.
Todd Kaighin, an HIV patient in downtown Toronto, largely smokes traditional joints, while Janice Cyre outside Edmonton presses her marijuana leaves into steeped tea. Many users also nibble on the odd brownie or cookie baked with cannabis leaves, pot-infused oil or canna-butter.
All have their federal licences to legally take medical marijuana to help dull pain, boost appetite and curtail nausea or diarrhea associated with multiple sclerosis, colitis, severe arthritis, HIV or fibromyalgia. But all laugh disdainfully at the dried marijuana grown by the federal government in a mine in Manitoba, describing it as “dust” or “catnip in a bag” that has little therapeutic benefit and brings headaches.
They either buy their medical pot illegally through compassion clubs or legally grow their own plants in their basements, with some occasionally and reluctantly forced to buy from street dealers when their supply
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