Victoria, British Columbia: Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided the Vancouver Island Therapeutic Cannabis Research Center late last week, seizing an estimated 900 medicinal cannabis plants. The operation produced standardized, high quality marijuana for the 390 members of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society (VICS), which had been supplying medical cannabis to qualified patients since 1999.
“This is devastating,” VICS founder and Director Philippe Lucas said, adding that he intends to challenge the legality of the raid in court. “With Health Canada bumbling the production and distribution of cannabis, we’ve strived to ensure the safety and quality of the VICS product by testing it for cannabinoids, heavy metals, and biological impurities; with the execution of a single warrant all of our members have been thrown back into the vagaries and uncertainties of the black market.”
Two men were arrested in the raid, one of whom was an authorized caretaker, Lucas said.
In addition to growing and dispensing 35 different strains of medical cannabis, the center was conducting a number of scientific studies on cannabis’ ability to treat chronic pain, nausea and symptoms associated with Hepatitis C.
The center had also conducted several scientific analyses on the quality of Health Canada’s medicinal cannabis – finding that its potency was approximately half of what the government claimed, and that it contained numerous impurities. In a recent VICS press release, they noted that of the 93 legal federal exemptees who have ordered cannabis through the government, nearly one-third had returned it because of its poor quality.
“Since 90 percent of Canadians support the medical use of cannabis, and with Health Canada clearly unable to meet it’s commitments to Canada’s medicinal users, why are taxpayer money, and police and court resources still wasted on the arrest and prosecution of medicinal cannabis users and producers?” Lucas asked.
For more information, please contact either Allen St. Pierre of the NORML Foundation at (202) 483-5500 or Philippe Lucas of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society at (250) 884-9821.