Last month a batch of pot cookies made it to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Owen Smith was baking the fancier-than-average cookies in his Victoria, BC home for a marijuana compassionate club when the cops busted him. That was in 2009.
Six years later, after a hearing in March, the Supreme Court will rule on whether Smith was allowed to cook with cannabis extract. If he wins, it will mean medical marijuana users can sip weed tea or nibble cannabis cookies without fearing Health Canada’s wrath.
Last week I walked down to the compassionate club on Gottingen Street to find some edible eaters. As is typical for a Friday afternoon at the Farm Assists Cannabis Resource Centre, the lounge in the back of the shop was filled with chilled-out patients hitting the vaporizers hard. A friendly dog wandered from person to person, having the time of his life.
“Edibles have been around since the dawn of basically weed,” said one fellow when I ask him about consuming cannabis. But these days, edibles are getting a bad rap with Health Canada because they’re easy to surreptitiously transport and consume, he explains. You might get a funny look if you’re smoking a joint, but not if you’re eating a cookie.
Imagine a little old lady who busted her hip, he posits. If she has a cannabis license but she doesn’t want to smoke the stuff, what is she supposed to do?
“Can I interject?” another club member pipes up. “The reason it’s in the Supreme Court of Canada is because Health Canada said patients are only allowed to possess marijuana in flower form, and the second you remove it from the dried bud flower state, it becomes an extract, which is illegal.
“So the little old lady he was just talking about, if she wants to make marijuana tea, she’s now breaking the law. If you want to make cookies, you’re breaking the law.”