Article by Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun via Montreal Gazette
Former premier-turned-pot-proponent Mike Harcourt couldn’t have sounded happier and more optimistic than if he just blew a big blunt.
“I did use marijuana in the ’60s and early ’70s but haven’t used it since,” he laughed.
“I’m into wine — and a beer after a good tennis match. But from my experience of the last 13 years as a partial quadriplegic — 20 per cent of my body is still paralyzed — and I work with Rick Hansen and the disabled community, so I’ve seen the suffering and the pain, that people with spinal-cord injuries and other disabled people go through, and I think there are real benefits to cannabis.”
Injured in a 2002 fall at his Pender Island cottage, the avuncular erstwhile mayor of “Vansterdam on the Pacific” and NDP leader now is chair of Lumby-based True Leaf Medicine International Inc., one of 400-plus firms in the regulatory pipeline to produce medicinal cannabis.
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Harcourt this week wrote to Ottawa urging it to use the existing “onerous” vetting process for producers and the same distribution system for medical and recreational cannabis.