I have begun to believe my mind is full of tiny little topics that act like pimples.

No one can predict the order they start to fester in, or when they’ll get ripe and burst.

An Argument for the Personal Growth of Medical Marijuana



An Argument for the Personal Growth of Medical Marijuana

At some point in the not too far distant future, the price of my Medical Marijuana is going to reach a level where it is too costly to buy. Twelve years of mismanagement of the Marihuana Medical Access Program has resulted in the current situation where the Harper government will either have to complete the Revision of the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations or Legalize Marijuana and somehow control its production. A resolution is going to take years to arrive.

My name is Blaine Barrett and I’m a resident of Surrey, BC and a Licensee of the Marihuana Medical Access Program. I’m a Senior citizen on fixed income, married and supporting my wife of 50 years. I work part time as a Security Guard to augment a break even income situation. I suffer from double depression: I’m dysthymic with sporadic Major Depressive incidents, a buggered-up back and, next to finances and survival, I need my pot. I can’t get high and haven’t in years, I need my pot to just function normally.

The problem I have with any future price increase is the inability to buy an adequate supply. At this current time I have great difficulty an affording it, but I had a Designated Grower who sold to me for $100/oz. basically production cost. Notice the HAD. He is giving up after seven years as a compassionate grower and against his will, but fears of the Surrey Posse Comitatus and bankruptcy by Reparations if discovered. He’s stopped growing now but fortunately he has some in reserve, and provides just me now, (his other guy died). He won’t run out until Christmas. I can’t afford street, I decided to grow my own legally so I contacted Surrey City Hall.

I obtained a copy of the City of Surrey Medical Marihuana Production License Application Form, the Controlled Substance Property Bylaw 2006 No 15820 and the Surrey Medical Marijuana Production and Licensing Regulation By-law, 2011, No. 17410 almost recoiled at the hostility, bias and distortions of the truth that has prompted the last one, No. 17410. Together they constitute a barrier that is impossible for me to surmount. The City of Surrey is prejudicially restricting me from exercising a right that is legal on both Federal and Provincial jurisdictions.

So why can’t I surmount it?
  There are 6 problem areas to be considered
1.     Cost:
2.     Complexity of technical and planning requirements
3.     Unnecessary escalation of costs
4.     Distortion of fact and bias in presentation.
5.     Out of date.
6.     Discrimination in location bias

To deal with each in order:
1. Costs
Costs are the primary obstacle that has resulted in the ruination of the Marihuana Medical Access Program. The origin of these problems was at the beginning of the Program. No consideration of whether the client base could afford that price was given and they lost money hand over fist. Considering that the purchasing capacity of the program rested with a mostly sick, old, disabled, unemployable bunch of paupers, failure was unavoidable and it’s been a dead loss history for the past ten years.

At the inception of the Marihuana Medical Access Program Health Canada granted Prairie Plant Products a no-bid contract to for a Single strain of pot and set the price to buy it at $5/gram + taxes. No consideration of whether the client base could afford that price was given and they lost money hand over fist. Considering that the purchasing capacity of the program rested with a mostly sick, old, disabled, unemployable bunch of paupers, failure was unavoidable. in 2001 they set the price for medical marijuana at $5 per gram or $150/ounce and has not been increased.
The majority of Licensees couldn’t afford it then and still can’t considering the rise in the poverty level over the pas ten years 

I have a small allowance for Medical Marijuana, (2 grams/day) and that monthly dosage will still cost $350+taxes +++ from Health Canada. I can’t pay the full amount. There is no other legal source because Health Canada couldn’t be bothered to set up a distribution system. There is no recourse; you buy small amounts off the street. The only other source is Personal or Designated Growth and here we are.

The majority of all Licensees are individuals’ dependant on fixed pension income from the Government. Licensees are all sick, retired, disabled, or one of the very few still able to earn an income. i.e. These individuals only have OAS and CPP as income. The maximum possible income is available only to a retired recipient who is collecting maximum OAS of $537.97 and is so physically destroyed by illness to qualify for the maximum CPP Disability of $1,153.37. These fortunate individuals qualify for $1691.34/month before tax and almost make it to the poverty line: Almost but not quite.
The "poverty line" for a single person living in a major city in 2007 was $21,666 or $1805/month (before tax) as defined by Statistics Canada. We now have 5 more years of inflation and financial crises impact to consider and the "poverty line" has risen to level never before seen. Given the need to buy groceries or pot (with almost 25% of your income) it doesn’t take a great deal of brains to conclude that physical survival trumps relief of symptoms. Symptoms are non-life threatening; Starvation isn’t.
Legalization will not help but will compound our problem. Legalization and taxation will of necessity result in a cost increase simply because of the expense of adding the overhead of regulatory compliance and reporting to the actual cost of production. To this inflated base cost, now add the growers and distributors greed and profit incentives an increase is unavoidable.

The only way a Licensee can obtain a supply at anywhere near an affordable level is via the Personal and Designated Growth options. The Federal Government seems determined to eliminate these. They can try but if they continue to classify Marijuana as a controlled substance, they must continue to provide an exemption and a source of supply for those who qualify for Medical Marijuana. That has been established as a right as a result of constitutional and Charter challenges that have succeeded against the current Governments’ biased and prejudiced attitude and actions. Their warped interpretation of “Harm Reduction” in the context of controlled substance use is the proposed mandatory incarceration for growing more than six plants.

2.   Complexity of technical and planning requirements

The City of Surrey Medical Marihuana Production License Application Form, requires the submission of 8 sets of plans for Personal, growing for yourself

  1. Floor
  2. Ventilation plan
  3. Prevention of harmful mould plan
  4. Remediation plan
  5. Security and lighting plan
  6. Electrical, lighting & equipment plan
  7. electrical distribution plan & demand load
  8. Storage plan
  9. Disposal plan

Three more if you are a Designated Grower growing for someone else:

  1. Delivery plan
  2. Security camera use and placement plan
  3. Neighbourhood responsibility plan

To add insult to injury; the duplication of a Criminal Record Check for a grower is stupid. He just had to have a clean one in order to get the Health Canada License to Photocopy to submit ref Application requirement Number two: another unnecessary $75 Cost.

I am probably a typical applicant in that I have minimal knowledge of drafting or construction. Remediation for what? I have no idea what improbable possible crimes I might be committing because I haven’t completed a course regarding the 6 Bylaws I’m supposed to interpret.

·        Cultivation and Production of Medical Marijuana Bylaw, No. 17410
·        Zoning Bylaw, No. 12000
·        Controlled Substance Property Bylaw, 2006, No. 15820
·        Surrey Electrical Safety Bylaw, 2004, No. 15596
·        Surrey Plumbing Bylaw, 1981, No. 6569
·        Surrey Building Bylaw, 1987, No. 9011


3.    Unnecessary escalation of costs
The whole process of inspection and its’ severity is the determination of one single individual City Employee. There is no reason an applicant should trust the decision of a City Inspector who will follow the hostile approach laid out in the Bylaw. As I read the Bylaw, as soon as he finds one marijuana plant in the house it is determined to be a Grow-Op and punitive action is arbitrary under Section 5.2.  As such it is his sole determination whether layer upon layer of fees and fines applies. If he thinks there might be any number of flaws he can order an inspection for each. It costs the city nothing because the applicant is required to pay $643 for any Inspection by a Technical expert regardless of the outcome. and as per the definition for “Hazard” under Section 3.1 there are eight possibilities. To further add insult to injury, if there are no violations found by these eight experts, their reports have to be approved by some other expert with even higher qualifications before releasing the premises so residency can be resumed,

Add up the possible fees starting with $3920 for First Inspection + a possible 8 x $643 = $5144 depending on the First Inspectors of paranoia at the first inspection. As a final deterrent add $343 Service Fee plus a no limit number of services the City can arbitrarily levy for whatever they decide is a Service.


4. Distortion of fact and bias in presentation.

The City of Surrey Medical Marihuana Production License Application Form is misnamed
It should be named
City of Surrey Marihuana Production License Application Form
It has nothing to do with Medical Marihuana.

It has been designed, by intention or Murphy’s Law, to prevent the growth of large quantities of legal marijuana. As I see it the only applicant who could legally apply, even now, would be a holder of a Federal Commercial Medical Marihuana Production and Distribution License (if ever they get around to creating one): An optimistically stupid Millionaire who expects to make a profit.

There are two completely different modes of cultivation to be considered:

  1. Commercial scale production for resale, and
  2. Small scale Personal production for use as a medication.
 The Bylaw is designed to eliminate or minimize “hazards”. Any hazards connected to marijuana growth are directly related to shortcomings in the physical construction of the production facility, negligence in safe operating procedures, or in the disposal of waste products. The difference in the potential to pose hazards between the two methods is astronomical. The bylaw is designed for and suitable for the degree of hazard posed by a commercial operation. They have the resources and finances to afford the expense of complying with the bylaw. At the point of applying for a License they can actually come up with the $3700 application fee and have the resources to then pay for the creation of a bylaw compliant grow op. Now add to that the high cost of the physical growth system: Lights, pumps, timers, and fans (all state of the art), controlled by automatic system: enabling long periods without a physical operator to minimize labour content.

Commercial production involves the growth of a maximum amount of plants for the available space. These are force fed chemicals and utilize techniques designed to maximize the rate of growth, the potency and the output of large quantities of marijuana. If the operation is illegal it is probably slapped together with little regard for anything but how fast the first crop is going to come. The construction is the source of hazards: electrical, fire, and safety, all stem from negligence or ignorance of even minimum construction standards. The room is sealed; humidity is kept high and is full of carbon dioxide to promote growth creating a perfect environment for mould. There also are large volumes of waste nutrient to dispose of, as well as excess greenery from the trimming and harvesting. By and large the Bylaw is directed at those operations that involve intimate contact with and modifications to the “Premises” i.e. the room it’s grown in. A personal grow operation can avoid that problem completely.

Personal growth operations are markedly dissimilar and in order of magnitude miniscule by comparison. The purpose is not quantity but quality. A large personal grow is about 15 plants (a 3 gm./day quantity)  that are coddled and cared for on a daily basis. If contained in a properly constructed space that is isolated from the external environment, there are no hazards and the only by-products are brownies and the occasional gallon of excellent lawn and garden fertilizer.



5- The Bylaws are Out of date.

The biggest problem with the whole bylaw is that it is based on old data and obsolete ideas. It has no provision to recognize the sophistication, reduction in grow size possible or the containment of grow ops in sealed environments. Every hazard listed by the bylaw is related to contact and contamination of the “Premises” and environment by the grow operation or it’s by products: a commercial size operation cannot help but contact and contaminate some way or another.

That is not so with personal growth but the bylaw makes no provision for that. Having a safe code compliant grow operation doesn’t count. It should. That is the reason I am here.

Posing no hazard is not a solution to the problem. There is no recognition that with technical advances I can now construct a Code Compliant Grow Op and run it safely in a box the size of a small freezer. It’s really no big deal to make a sealed airtight box with 4 internal compartments and install the necessary hardware components for a Mother plant, her clones, their growth stage and a ripening compartment. There are already commercially produced Gro Boxes that meet or exceed safety requirements already on the market. Two of these are shown in Appendix #1.

One of the manufacturers of hydroponic grow systems is right here in Surrey and makes an excellent product. This unit is large enough to grow 9 plants and supply about two, possibly three patients or customers. It’s got a price tag of $3600 but given the output its well worth the price. I wanted to show you a sample to get approval before a purchase, but understandably the manufacturers didn’t feel quite comfortable associating with a rabble rouser like me. Given a simple set of plans and a source of selected grow equipment, an equally safe “homemade” Grow Container” about half the size can be for less than half the cost. We take all the hazards and confine them to a box.

Even if I could get a Bloombox approved as conforming to all the Bylaws, unfortunately now we run into the discriminatory aspects of the case.
We are now at the point of going to City Hall and asking for approval of either a set of plans for, or an already constructed grow op. and now we run into one final barrier.

6. Discrimination
If somehow I managed to get past all the obstacles I run into a final barrier that is discriminatory. I can’t grow it at home where I want, have to now go to a Commercial or industrial area and pay for rent, a separate hydro account, the owner’s permission and a compulsory invasion by the owner to make sure I’m being a good boy. I resent the fact that this city refuses to let me grow a legal crop, no different than tomatoes, just because it is labelled a Controlled Substance.
  1. Controlled or not, I have a License to grow it.
  2. I want to do it in my place of residence.
  3. I have a perfectly safe Code Compliant operation in which to do it. A Grow Box
  4. The Bylaw is discriminatory: it restricts my ability to grow a crop that I am legally entitled to grow simply because my crop is named “Marijuana”.
I resent the fact that the City automatically assumes that I am not worthy of trust and sets up a control that invades my privacy in order to ensure that I am not lying about staying in compliance. There is a presumption of criminal propensity.  I very much pride my reputation for honesty. The bylaw assumes that by applying for a permit I am untrustworthy, a liar or felon who has to be checked up on, they require a Criminal Records Check for which the RCMP now charges $75. What irritates me off more is that the city is too cheap to pay for a quarterly inspection by an employee and orders my landlord to do it no charge. Why would any owner rent to me given the Part 5- Responsibilities of Owners section of the Bylaw? I wouldn’t! Any accidental minor mistake on my part makes him subject to the judgement of a Bylaw Department that is demonstrably biased and hostile.
Where does the city come off telling me that if I need a puff of my medication I have to go off public property and out of sight? Where does the city come off handing out penalties for my illegal activities? Things like growing too much or trafficking. As I understand it, matters of that nature are Federal Crimes and other than reporting the offences now the City wants a finder’s fee to profit from it: that’s double jeopardy. The whole approach and attitude towards me is simply stupid and an arrogant display of a lack of common sense. There is no consideration of me, my rights, my privacy, or my reputation. The municipality apparently can assume the power of probably handing out fines to criminals as secondary punishment for committing the crime in the sacred premises of the municipality. Just more
“NOT IN MY BACK YARD”!
In Conclusion: A Request for Assistance
Has anybody in the whole Municipal community even considered that maybe these are actually poor unfortunates who need help?
Medical Marijuana Licensees who want to grow their own supply of pot are not the enemy but residents in your community that need help and your help is needed. The system on which we are depending has become a circus about legalization and regulation. I want you at City level to get to the truth, empathize, understand, and exercise some common sense by permitting exceptions, or making another Bylaw specifically for small scale Personal Growth
I would like simply to get you all to see a Personal Growth applicant as somebody who needs help. He’s asking you for some. Why not try giving him some assistance? He’s in an impossible bind right now. He can’t afford his medication and he needs it.
To suggest a few things that you might consider when assessing the problem.
  1. Waive the upfront inspection and fees. For cripes sake he recognizes the hazards and doesn’t want to create one. He’s volunteering and punitive measures are not called for.
  2. If he has a plan or a Grow Op, criticize it and correct it. If he doesn’t, help him design one, or better yet, have a pre-approved plan ready for a Small scale Grow Op for no more than 25 plants.
  3. Monitor his progress and advise when in error.
  4. Forget the banning of a residence zoning. There’s no threat if you have approved the plan and its construction. All that is needed is a box about the size of a large freezer. It’s only connection to the premises that is the space it takes up and an electric wall plug.
That pretty much ends my argument. At this point I have no idea what happens next. I have requested Council to allow me participate in any decision making process that will follow. I’m the one on the receiving end and I want my input heard.
I presented this Argument to Surrey City Council today. I will wait for their response before making any more comments regarding this matter.



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