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UK: Orkney goes fruit and nut for grass

Alex Massie

Scotland on Sunday

Sunday 22 Jul 2001

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Sweet treat: Biz Ivol, 53, who has multiple sclerosis is
an ardent campaigner for allowing the drug's use for medicinal purposes.



They really should weed it out. Orkney's most controversial cottage
industry should, if the police, Crown Office and the procurator fiscal
all obey the letter of the law, be closed down forthwith. The open,
unashamed and bare-faced supply of Belgian chocolates stuffed to the
gunwales with cannabis is, after all, still supposed to be illegal. The
Misuse of Drugs Act may have been passed 30 years ago, but age has not
withered its proscriptions on the use of marijuana.

Despite being admonished by Kirkwall Sheriff Court in 1997 for
possessing some 27 cannabis plants, 53-year-old Biz Ivol remains an
unashamed consumer of marijuana-flavoured chocolates and exports her
recipes - or techniques - to the rest of the world.

This would, in normal circumstances, bring the full force of the law
upon her. But times and circumstances change and the fact that Ivol has
multiple sclerosis makes these muddy, murky waters.

With her fellow MS sufferer, Bill Reeve, Ivol is leading a boisterous
campaign to see the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes
decriminalised.

"I don't understand what's going on. I've been so blatant about what's
going on. The police know I'm growing, using and supplying."

Justice Minister Jim Wallace, Ivol's local MSP, backs the call for the
legalisation of cannabis for medicinal treatment, as do the majority of
MSPs, according to a survey by Scotland on Sunday last year. That
decision, however, remains reserved to Westminster.

The government licensed GW Pharmaceuticals - which raised pounds25m
floating on the stock market last month - to carry out research into the
development and efficacy of cannabis-based medicines to alleviate pain.
Though initial reports from ongoing clinical trials are encouraging,
according to the company, no drugs, if any, will be available until 2003
at the earliest.

Last year Dame Ruth Runciman delivered a report for the Police
Foundation recommending that cannabis be reclassified as a Class C drug,
while last week Labour backbencher Jon Owen Jones tabled a Private
Member's Bill in the House of Commons calling for the drug to be
legalised.

Even the Conservatives have crept out of the woodwork to call for a
proper debate on the drug's status.

Ivol was diagnosed with MS 10 years ago. "I've tried all the drugs they
prescribe, but the side effects have been so awful that I asked my
doctor what I should try next. He said to use cannabis, so I got 30
seeds, planted them and soon had 30 plants - I thought it was very
difficult to grow, you read all these things about hydroponics and all
that - well, I couldn't believe it.

"I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to do, I was just using the
leaves and found it easing the MS symptoms. I smoked it on its own and
felt I was stuck to the ceiling for hours, and wondering what I'd done
wrong.

"Bill doesn't smoke so I made some chocolates for him, rubbing the
cannabis through a sieve until it becomes a powder, then mixing it with
melted Belgian chocolate to make sweeties. Sometimes he gets high and
talks to the telegraph pole outside who's now called Trevor..."

Most of the time, however, the doses are so small as to avoid any
hallucinogenic effect. The pair have even devised cannabis patches for
Reeve to wear when he requires specialist treatment.

Ivol is telephoned half a dozen times a day by MS patients from as far
afield as Finland and Arkansas who want to know how they can take
advantage of the supposed relief cannabis gives. Most of them are non-
smoking middle-aged women anxious not to be seen breaking the law, so
Ivol sends them a batch of her cannabis chocolates together with the
recipe so her new recruits may find the dosage that suits them best.
Most, though not all, are MS sufferers.

"I have one cigarette at bedtime every night," Ivol says. "If I stop I
notice the difference - by God I get awful muscle spasms and the pain is
horrific. You don't sit there stoned talking rubbish, it's not a big
dose, not as much as you'd use in a joint, but we've found this the
easiest way to take it and passed the info on.

"No one else is helping us so we have to help ourselves. Everyone has
just kept what they are doing quiet because it is illegal."

Ivol claims, however, that a police officer told her that she had no
need of expensive halogen lamps to grow her cannabis because it would
thrive in her back garden. That's a claim that surprises Inspector Paul
Eddington of the Kirkwall police. "I'd be extremely surprised if any of
my officers had given advice like that to anyone. That would concern me
and I'd be looking to address that."

Although he says the police "have an obligation to uphold the law as it
stands just now", the days of dawn raids on suspects' houses are long
gone. "It's an intelligence-led policing ethos" drugs use in Orkney
follows the same pattern as elsewhere: it's on the increase, but we're
clear in our organisation that the preferred drug in Orkney is alcohol.
The only death we've had recently was at the New Year when an 18-year-
old boy died purely from his alcohol intake. Illicit drugs can be
demonised beyond what is reasonable whereas alcohol poses a clearer
threat but is more widely tolerated. It's a difficult balance to get it
right."

Ivol is baffled that it has taken so long for cannabis legalisation to
become part of political debate. She remains adamant, however, that just
as politicians are prepared to concede that, at the very least, a debate
on the drug's status must be held, so too is the medical profession
inexorably coming around to her point of view.

"I think all the doctors know how beneficial this plant can be, but
they're just not allowed to prescribe it, and I think they feel sorry
for people because there is something that will help without any side
effects. There's a hell of a lot of difference between drug use and drug
abuse. This isn't drug abuse, I just use it. Does that make sense?"

amassie@scotlandonsunday.com

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