I Have a Bone to Pick With Surrey
They Finally
Crossed the Line
Ever since I discovered Surrey’s blockade of
Medical Marijuana I have been sitting and stewing in my own juice. I have had
to listen to Fire Chief Len Garis on his bully pulpit preaching against the
growing of Marijuana as a threat to the Community and nobody has ever stood up
and cried “BULLSHIT”. I tried to
take a positive step towards preventing the damage they are bringing on Surrey and I got a slap
in the face and ordered to stay off City Property with my clipboard.
WHY!
Go Figure?
No one else is doing it so I decided to ask
why they are swallowing
BULLSHIT!
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I just sent them this:
Attn: Mayor and Council
CC:wmoriarty@theprovince.com,pcarlson@surreyleader.com,hmunro@vancouversun.com,contact@straight.com,editor@thetyee.ca,cbcnewsvancouver@cbc.ca,newsonline@ctv.ca,news@ctv.ca,bsimpson@thenownewspaper.com,
Re: Surrey Policy regarding Marijuana Growth and the
SensibleBC Referendum
Greetings Mayor Watts and Council:
1.
My name is Blaine Barrett and I am a Medical Marijuana
advocate and Licensee.
2.
I have lived in Surrey the past 22 years
but if I was not married and anchored I would have left in disgust 5 years ago.
3.
I injured my back in 1999 and I still have a problem with
pain flare ups and depression. Neurologically and Psychologically Marijuana
allows me to function almost normally.
4.
It took me 7 years but I was finally able to find a doctor
to sign my application and received my MMAD License in 2009. I am a Senior
Citizen on fixed income and knowing Surrey had By-laws
regarding grow-ops I decided to grow my own. My 2 gram per day dosage was small
and would only require 10 plants. I have a large spare bathroom to create a
grow-op so I decided to apply for a License.
5.
This City Council, where I chose to live, became my enemy
when I discovered the complete impossibility of meeting any requirements to
obtain a legal license to grow my own supply of marijuana for medication.
6.
Since the creation of the Medical Marihuana Access
Regulations the City of Surrey, based largely on the advice of Fire
Chief Len Garis has developed a set of prohibitive by-law requirements that
stand as a model for the rest of Canadian Municipalities in effectively
blocking any legal growth of Medical Marijuana
7.
Over the past decade Surrey Fire Chief Len Garis has been a
tireless opponent of Grow-ops. He has established himself and the City as the
leading opponents of Medical Marijuana Growth by creating a Bylaw structure
that is impossible to meet except by a major corporation with unlimited
finance.
8.
I wanted to grow perhaps 15 plants in a large closet and do
it safely. I know how.
9.
In order to do so I must complete an application form
requiring detailed planning beyond any individual’s ability. Even if I manage
to complete the application it has to be accompanied by an initial Inspection
fee of $3920. As a comparison my current 2 grams per day allowance will cost me
$3780 dollars per year from Health Canada and next April
will probably double in price. I will wind up paying $8-$10/gram or grow it for
less than $2/gram. With inspection and supervision it can grown safely. I want
to!
10.
I am confident Council thinks there is a good basis of facts
justifying the City’s opposition but reality is the whole structure is based on
Chief Garis’s carefully crafted distortion of the risks involved with legal
grow-ops and you have all been misled. He has established a reputation as the
leading Canadian expert on home grow hazards and he’s using our By-law as a
model to emulate and its all a pack of lies.
11.
Chief Garis has spent the last ten years trumpeting the
horrible consequences of permitting grow-ops: Fire Hazards, Safety hazards,
toxic chemicals, home invasion, and danger to children, mold, and criminal
involvement. Over and over he has pounded his allegations that all of these are
related and inevitable with the cultivation of marijuana and that is a
carefully and calculated lie and distortion of fact.
12.
The risks that are constantly regurgitated by Chief Garis
are the source of the New Health Canada Marihuana
for Medical Purposes Regulations justification for establishing a no
grow-op policy as a risk reduction measure. Chief Garis may have encountered
all of the risks in his experience with Illicit Drugs and illegal criminal
grow-ops but none of them are relevant to the growth of marijuana. The fact is
that every one of them is ridiculous when applied to a legally licensed and
monitored Grow-op. When someone applies for a license, check out the location
and supervise the construction: then inspect it! If it’s not safe don’t license
it. Simple common sense but Chief Garis can’t understand that.
13.
There has been no attempt made by the City to keep up to
date with advances in grow technology and reality is that there are grow tents
and other facilities that separate the growth area from all its its surrounding
environment and any possible interaction with the room surrounding is
impossible except when opened for service. There are no hazards.
14.
If the above dangers are real and are to be avoided there is
nothing pro-active in Surrey policy to prevent
them. As soon as the MMPR is implemented there is going
to be a massive demand for affordable marijuana and there will be none: Not
legal, not from the street. If you need your medication you have to grow it and
when that day happens, Surrey is going to become
deluged with small illegal grow- ops. There is no alternative.
15.
The by-laws as they now stand are an impassable roadblock to
any legal growth. The alternative of applying to the City for help in creating
a safe grow-op has been eliminated. There is no access to guidance as to how to
create a legal grow environment with none of the hazards to grow our medication.
That option is not available and won’t be unless you make a crack in the wall.
Nobody else can. Thanks to Chief Garis lead by creating this blockage you have
now exposed every citizen of Surrey to far more
serious hazard than the loss of property:
1. Arrest,
2. a Criminal
Record,
3. a mandatory
prison sentence, and
4. a ruined future
life with lost opportunity.
16.
Last week I set out and tried to prevent that happening. I
recently received my Certification from Elections Canada as a Canvasser for the
SensibleBC Referendum to Decriminalize Marijuana and I needed a site to do so
and the Guildford Community Centre seemed a suitable place with a reasonable
flow of traffic. I enquired and was told to contact City Hall for permission..
17.
At the beginning of last week I contacted City Hall and
asked if I could set up a small site at the Guildford Recreation Center to get signatures
for the SensibleBC Referendum on Marijuana Decriminalization. My request was turned
down on the grounds Surrey “does not allow solicitation on City
Property” End of that! This did not compute.
18.
The next morning I called again and protested: I advised the
Manager I spoke to that a Referendum is not a Solicitation or signing of a
petition: It is the exercise of a right
to vote for a change in law. I was informed that was immaterial and there
was no way that I could legally walk onto City Properly and ask for a
signature.
19.
I am here to protest that Surrey City Policy has trumped my
rights as a Citizen of this Country, this Province, and of Surrey.
20.
All Surrey citizens have the
right to be informed of where the nearest voting location for the Referendum is,
and I, as a Surrey citizen, have the right to inform him of
that. I am a Registered Canvasser for SensibleBC, carrying Elections Canada
Forms for signature. The SensibleBC program has had problems because people
don’t know where to go to sign the Referendum. I am now forbidden to walk into a
“public” space, contact a potential voter, identify myself and explain that if
that person is interested in signing the Referendum and would like to know
where to go to sign, he just found it.
21.
Wake up. This
Referendum has no connection to Marijuana (Medical or otherwise) and its growth,
but “Decriminalization” of Marijuana
is to prevent prosecution for possession under the Criminal Code of Canada. Our fearless
leader, Stevie the Stupid seems determined to ram his omnibus bill, (including
mandatory prison sentences for growers of more than six plants), and the new
Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations through Parliament in April,
If he succeeds, and it seems inevitable, we all have a problem but the main
concern to me is for parents in the community The primary threat is to any
teenager who against parental advice gets caught with any amount of marijuana
in their possession. The fact is that every teen knows better than Dad at some
point: errors in judgment are inevitable.
22.
If both are passed, this Council, under the guidance of
Chief Garis, will be guilty of placing every youth living in Surrey under threat of
arrest, a Criminal Record, possible imprisonment, and a guaranteed loss of
future opportunity as a consequence. THE MMPR is founded on the intentionally
biased and distorted hazards presented by Surrey as your justification
for installing by-laws to prevent personal growth. You bought Chief Garis
bullshit and now you’re going to get bit back. Good on you.
23.
In Conclusion there
is one other matter that must be included. At the current moment: under Chief
Garis lead Council is considering amendments to the Controlled Substance
Property Bylaw that will require owners of residential properties containing
medical marijuana grow-ops to remediate the facilities in order to protect
future owners from health risks associated with growing the plant. There are
none, it’s all lies.
24.
The amendment is a paranoid premature money grab. There is
no justification for Surrey to be able to
enter my home to determine whether I am growing and hit me with an exorbitant
inspection fee and if I am growing, post that information on file as a warning
to any prospective buyer of my home to reduce their risk. Then you must report
me to the same distorted justice to which you are going to expose your
children: Arrest, a Criminal Record and possible imprisonment.
25.
If protection of the future owner is the aim, simply make it
mandatory that all premises be inspected if
and when they are put up for sale. If I want to live in my home for the
next twenty years until I die and never sell it. Why should I have to pay in
advance? Any risk until my death is my risk. Do your punitive inspection then
when I die. If there’s not enough bucks in my estate then burn the damned
place, sell the property and give the proceeds to a charity I am quite prepared
to name in my will if that option is open.
26.
On a final note I am given to understand that Chief Garis has
already bragged he has a hit list of 800 suspect properties to be inspected. If
he has I want to know where he got that information. Given the rampant
invasions of privacy that have plagued medical marijuana growers I suspect that
Health Canada has already provided him with all the locations of licensed grow
ops in Surrey. Every Licensee of the MMAR
was given to believe that all their information was Top Secret in Health Canada files. I suspect
that the Harper Government has reneged on that promise and every municipality
in Canada has been provided
with a hit list of Licensee’s holding production licenses.
In conclusion I only want answers to two
questions:
1.
Why and where does Surrey get the authority
to forbid me to canvass on city property?
2.
What is the source of Chief Garis 800 Suspect list?
Thank you for your time, attention and
consideration
I look forward to your reply
Blaine Barrett
255 10202-149St.
Surrey BC V3R 3Z8
Phn: 604-585-0236
E-mail: thesmeegoanguy@gmail.com
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