Former BC Premier Mike Harcourt is High on the Prospect of Cannabis Reform

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.

Read full article here.