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This article was published 22/7/2017 (1157 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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While Brandon’s political representatives encourage the delay of the legalization of marijuana, local advocates of the plant are saying the day couldn’t come soon enough.

Picking up related paraphernalia at Growers N’ Smokers on Friday, veteran Michael Gibson said that his "disrespect" for Premier Brian Pallister is "huge, right now."

This week, Pallister publicly requested that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delay legalization for an extra year beyond the proposed date of July 1, 2018.

With too many questions that still need answering, we’re just not ready for legalization, Brandon East Progressive Conservative MLA Len Isleifson said, sharing in some of Pallister’s concerns about marijuana, more accurately called cannabis.

"I’ve talked to a number of people, where we just don’t have a lot of answers for them," Isleifson said, citing several areas in which the federal government has yet to clarify either the legalities of cannabis or how it might handle some concerns, such as how to determine whether drivers are inebriated.

The federal government has put forward the idea that growing four plants would be legal, but how does one count them? Isleifson asked. Do you count plants that have been taken down to dry, or only those being grown? What if more than one person lives in a housing unit or building? Do they each get four plants?

"It’s not a matter of delaying, it’s a matter of getting things right," he said. "I think for the sake of Manitobans’ safety we need to make sure things are in place before we move forward."

Brandon West Progressive Conservative MLA Reg Helwer is on a provincial caucus working group, whose members, he said, have their hands full seeking answers to these and other concerns that have been brought forward.

While legalization is intended to take the criminal element out of cannabis sales, he said that Health Canada-approved growers aren’t set up to supply enough product to accommodate recreational sales, meaning the criminal element would remain.

"We only have one chance to get it right," Helwer said.

Dismissing similar concerns brought forward by Pallister as being delay tactics, Gibson said that he has found a benefit to medical cannabis that he wants to see more people

have the opportunity to experience without the risk of prosecution.

Gibson received a medical marijuana prescription approximately two months ago, though Growers N’ Smokers owner Rick Macl said that not everyone’s fortunate to have a doctor wiling to offer one.

Chronic back, knee and ankle pain resulted in Gibson receiving a recent medical discharge from the Canadian military, capping his nine-year career in what he considers a haze of prescription medicine.

Prescribed Percocet, he said that as his tolerance level increased, he began taking more and more of it.

"More than I should have, " he said. "I was almost taking fentanyl."

With encouragement from Macl, Gibson asked his doctor for a cannabis prescription, which he was granted.

Since then, he said he has regained the ability to sleep at night, adding, "Most days, I can get through the day" —a vast improvement from his previously overly medicated state.

Receiving a prescription isn’t the easiest nut to crack for some people in Brandon, with Macl linking those unable to secure a willing physician with others throughout the nation who are able to offer the service over the internet.

Although there are a handful of physicians in Brandon who prescribe cannabis, he said they don’t want their names out there out of fear they’ll be overrun by those seeking prescriptions.

With these legal barriers currently in place between those who might benefit from cannabis with what he has labeled a medicine, Macl has strong words against Pallister’s request that legalization be delayed.

"What’s (Pallister’s) problem?" he asked. "What are they sitting there still thinking about? Do these guys actually think that they know more than those who are already doing this?"

Brandon-Souris Conservative MP Larry Maguire plans on hosting public meetings this summer, at which he said he would strive to "allow everyday Westman residents to make their voices heard and to provide amendments, suggestions and ideas" on legalization.

Macl said he’s eager to attend these meetings, for which details are still being hashed out.

Like the city’s MLAs, Maguire has a number of questions and concerns that he wants to see the Liberals answer and resolve before legalization takes place.

Costs to policing are a big issue, which includes the means of measuring one’s THC levels —an ingredient in cannabis that can linger in one’s system for days, making its attribution toward impairment difficult to determine.

Maguire also questions whether four plants is the right number, what kind of public education campaign should accompany legalization and how it might be taxed, among other things.

Since he opened Growers N’ Smokers earlier this year, Macl said he has seen business boom with a wide swath of the population, but primarily with an older crowd, with his median customer approximately 60 years of age.

He’s still eager to begin selling cannabis as soon as legally possible and has expanded his business into a neighbouring property to accommodate the anticipated effort.

Whether recreational use becomes legal or otherwise, he said that his speciality would remain medical in nature because helping those trying to kick prescription drugs is where his passion lies.

There’s much to know that many doctors aren’t relaying to their patients, Macl said, adding that a simple "cannabis" prescription is meaningless if you don’t know what strain to ingest.

Providing an example, he said "Sativa is like the devil for PTSD patients because it makes your mind active."

Further to that, he said that although his business’s name is "Growers N’ Smokers," smoking isn’t actually the preferred means of absorbing cannabis, citing vaping and baked goods as the best means of doing so.

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB