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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Column: Biz Ivol's cannabis is no threat to society
Margo MacDonald, MSP Sunday Post, Dundee
Sunday 06 Jul 2003 IN MY garden this week, I've been unable to get Biz Ivol out of my thoughts. We're much the same age and we share a fondness for our gardens, although hers puts mine in the shade. There's huge pleasure in watching the life cycle of plants, and the sure knowledge that pet plants will flower again next year. But for Biz, this spring and summer have been different. For most of the 12 years she's known she has multiple sclerosis, Biz has worked in her garden. This year she's been unable to, as her condition has worsened. Her general well-being hasn't been helped by the strain of knowing she would have to appear in court to answer charges connected to her use of cannabis to relieve the dreadful pain she suffers from MS. Prohibited Biz couldn't have her day in court like other law-breakers. Her physical condition couldn't be accommodated in Kirkwall Sheriff Court, so she was wheeled into specially-adapted premises to answer the charge of using a prohibited drug to ease her pain. She has never denied using cannabis and freely admits to supplying bona fide fellow MS sufferers with chocolates laced with cannabis. But she pled not guilty because she wanted to argue the case for changing the law to allow the use of cannabis for the relief of pain. However, she was denied that when her trial was abandoned because of her failing health. That finally broke this brave woman's spirit. Exhausted by her MS and the stress and strain of the campaign she's been waging for years for a sensible law in relation to the use of cannabis for pain relief, she tried to end her life. Most people who know Biz Ivol's story admire her courage, her determined efforts to manage her life in spite of her debilitation and her willingness to help others similarly afflicted. So she smoked cannabis and they chomped her cannabis choccies . . . who was hurt by this? In the scale of crimes against society, it doesn't even register. So why did the Procurator Fiscal in Orkney judge bringing a prosecution against Biz to be in the public interest? That's one of the questions I've asked of Scotland's Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd. The other question I've asked the head of the Crown Office in Scotland concerns the right of local fiscals to apply sensitive and sensible judgement, depending on the circumstances, in deciding not to prosecute someone like Biz who can provide medical proof of a painful condition relieved by use of cannabis. Shades of opinion At a Civic Participation event last year, organised by the Scottish Parliament and attended by nearly 100 people representing all shades of opinion in Scotland, not a single person being consulted, and expressing an opinion on sentencing policies and alternatives to imprisonment, thought people like Biz Ivol should be prosecuted. It's now four years since I first tried to persuade my fellow MSPs to back a Scottish Parliament investigation into the patterns of use of cannabis by the various groups using it, whether for pain relief, relaxation or pleasure. I wish I'd been successful
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