A local medical marijuana user is dreading April 1.

That’s the date she will no longer be legally allowed to grow her own pot to treat her chronic pain.

The patient, who spoke with the Herald on a condition of anonymity, said she is dreading the end of the final month that she’s legally able to grow her own medicine.

She has had Crohn’s disease since she was 18. Crohn’s disease can cause inflammation in any part of the gastrointestinal tract and causes a wide variety of symptoms, primarily abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting.

It can also cause other complications, including inflammation of the eye, skin rashes and arthritis.

She has had three surgeries for her Crohn’s disease and has been in and out of hospitals for most of her life for various conditions associated with the disease.

She also has anxiety, osteoporosis and arthritis.

Now, at 53, she says marijuana is a treatment that works for her and her symptoms, but she’ll have to stop it.

As of April 1, the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulation replaces the Medical Marihuana Access Regulations.

Under the old rules (MMAR), people could be licensed to grow cannabis for personal use, and others could be licensed as third-party growers to produce for a maximum of two people each.

Under the new regulation, the Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulation, there will only be one way for people prescribed marijuana for medical purposes to access it: through Health Canada’s licensed producers. With that change comes an increase in the price of the pot from about $1-$5 per gram to an estimated $7-$12.

That price hike has some medical marijuana users concerned.

“Basically, the government’s forcing me — if I don’t want to do anything illegal — to go on heavy-duty pain pills. I can’t afford to buy it from the big licensed producers,” she said.

As of Tuesday, there were nine approved licensed producers.

The patient lived with her Crohn’s disease and its symptoms for decades before medicating with marijuana.

Before she started using it for medical purposes, the patient said her experience smoking marijuana was short-lived, when she used it recreationally during a teenage phase.

“Then I got married, the kids started coming, and it died away. It just happened naturally. We just didn’t do it,” she said.

In 2004, one of her co-workers in the Lower Mainland introduced her to smoking pot for her gut pain. He was HIV positive and used it to treat his symptoms.

She said after a few puffs of a joint, the severe pain in her gut was gone.

“I could tell my guts still weren’t working right, but it wasn’t something you wish you wouldn’t have to go through. It was tolerable,” she said.

But the pain and her anxiety caught up with her in 2009, when her health symptoms forced her to leave work.

Now she lives on a combination of pension and disability benefits.

She relocated to Merritt just under three years ago for its more affordable housing prices and for a change of scenery.

Nearly two years ago, she applied for a licence to produce marijuana for personal use.

It took about $2,000 to get the setup going and her marijuana growing.

“It’s hard work for me to deal with the plants and stuff, but that’s part of my therapy too. I love gardening, so for my depression, I’m under my lights in the winter, I’m gardening, and I’m feeling good about doing that and producing my own medicine,” she said.

“I wake up sore, but I’m used to living like that. But I have my tea, and after about an hour and a half, I turn on my volcano,” she said.

The volcano is a device that vaporizes cannabis so the THC is extracted and the patient breathes it in through a bag.

“I don’t want to smoke the joints and all that other junk in there,” she said of joints.

The patient said she also makes butter with her cannabis that she uses in cooking.

She said it’s helped with secondary consequences of her Crohn’s disease as well, including stimulating her appetite.

“It helps me to nourish my body too, because it makes me want to eat something,” she said. “Food’s done a number on my head because it’s meant pain to me so often. It’s pretty hard to put food in knowing it’s going to hurt.”

She doesn’t know exactly how many grams she’s prescribed per day, but pegs it at around 15.

Besides marijuana, she is on two antidepressants and one painkiller to help her sleep at night.

Being 53, she said she doesn’t want to spend the remainder of her life on painkillers, which she fears will be her only affordable option come April 1.

“Having to give up being able to work, and having self-esteem and depression and confidence issues … that’s what I have to live with,” she said. “Marijuana just works for me, for everything.

“I don’t want to have to be on heavy-duty painkillers and ruining my kidneys and liver and whatever else,” she said.

She is one of about 30,000 people in Canada who have licences to produce marijuana for personal use or for up to two others, but who will have to give them up and are expected to destroy their plants when the new regulation takes effect.

Using marijuana for pain relief is a part of her everyday life — and one that makes her medical issues tolerable, she says.

Stigma around medical marijuana

The patient said the stigma around medical marijuana use is getting in the way of her treatment.

For example, she spoke anonymously because she doesn’t want her neighbours or other people in Merritt to know and judge her situation, she said.

“You get a lot of people in Canada not understanding people like me,” she said.

“It’s not that everybody who has their medical marijuana licence is selling it and making a ton of money, taking advantage; and we’re [not] all potheads who are useless and do nothing. I use my pot so that I can do things,” she said.

In a letter to clients of the medical marijuana program, Health Canada wrote the program was “widely open to abuse” and posed safety risks to those allowed to grow marijuana in their homes, including risks for home invasions, fire hazards and toxic mould.

Health Canada also says people growing marijuana for medical purposes are tempted by selling it as a means to supplement their income.

“That’s not my mistake. That’s not my fault. For the government now to take away my medicine and say I can’t do my own medicine — I can’t afford to buy it. I’m on disability, for crying out loud. That was the whole point of me growing it, so that I could afford it and so I wouldn’t have to go out and illegally buy it,” she said.

“I’m a good person. I’ve never been in trouble with the law. I’ve never had a speeding ticket,” she said.

Come March 31, the law requires medical marijuana patients who used to grow their own to destroy their plants and their stocks. The letter from Health Canada recommends rendering the marijuana unfit for consumption by blending it with water, then mixing it with cat litter to mask the odour before putting it in the garbage.

The patient started taking down her growing setup about a month ago, but said she’s going to start growing again and wait to see what her next instructions are at the deadline.

For now, she hasn’t made a decision on what her next medications will be, but expects her limited income will prove a barrier to accessing product from licensed producers.

“I can’t pay for my other medication because I can’t afford it,” she said.

She said continuing to grow it is an option the change in access is forcing her and others like her to look at.

Dried marijuana is not an approved drug or medicine in Canada. The government is obligated to provide reasonable access to a legal source of marijuana to patients who are prescribed it by a doctor.

There are about 38,000 Canadians who are authorized to possess marijuana for medical purposes.