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By Dave Nelson

In this edition, I would like to let readers know a little bit about myself, and what brought me to the CBC of C. I joined the navy in 1980, and served for about 17 years. While working in the navy I incurred numerous injuries. When I was young, these injuries seem to heal in no time, but as i got older they came back to haunt me. When I got out of the navy I had no intention to apply for a pension from Veterans Affairs.

Throughout my career I have taken many pain-killers during the time of my injuries, but they were short periods and rarely anything stronger then Tylenol 3. After leaving the military I found a very good doctor, and applied for a pension through Veterans Affairs Canada. During the period from 1999 through 2006 I was prescribed a variety of pain killers relative to the injuries. The pills that were prescribed helped with the pain to a certain extent, but along with this came nausea, loss of appetite, loss of the ability to function in a normal manner, and on top of this—addiction. It was not a good six years. In 2006, I got a joint from a friend. After taking my regular medication, I smoked the joint. Not long after that I found I had an appetite instead of the usual nausea. When I told my doctor he gave me his prescription note, and on it he wrote that I used marijuana for medical purposes.

This is when I joined the CBC of C, and found that there was a wide variety of cannabis based medications. I found that there was an alternative to the hazy, addictive, mind and body numbing life. Over the next year, I stopped taking the pills and started taking cannabis instead. Since then I have applied for my licence, as well as letting Veteran Affairs Canada know that I would rather use cannabis than the pills that lowered the quality of my life.

In conclusion, I would ask any CBC of C member, or any person who knows someone on a Veterans Affairs pension, to join me in asking for the right to have a choice in medication that works best for us. Whether through Health Canada, the CBC of C, designated growers, or by growing it ourselves, we do not want to be labelled as criminals for using medication that best works for us. We are the people that followed orders, got injured, and now suffer. We do not want to be told by the Canadian government that the source of our medication is illegal. Health Canada only supplies one type of cannabis and none of the other cannabis based medications, i.e. marijuana infused pills, edibles, and lotions.