The things that go through my head

I had the most wonderful time meeting the people of Yorkton. My friends and I got the warmest of welcomes from all the people there. I will never forget sitting around Linda’s kitchen table talking to all of her friends and family. A few people wanted to talk us out of having our rally. They expressed fears about being arrested by the police, simply for making their voices heard about a very contentious issue. But we assured everybody that it would be all right. We had our video cameras rolling, our cannabis flag and rally signs. We took turns on the megaphone. We got many honks from supportive passers-by and many visits from people of all ages. I met up with a lot of young people who saw our protest plans on facebook and came out to check it out. I also met up with elderly people looking for medicine for their ailments. I got the opportunity to educate the public and let the people of Yorkton know that the drug laws need to be changed. I couldn’t have asked for a better day.

I have some video footage of the rally, unfortunately my cinematography and video editing skills are seriously lacking. A lot of it is wobbly and unusable and I still don’t know how to use windows moviemaker very well. At any rate, if I figure out how to cut and paste video, I will be on my way and I will be posting it here.

Before yesterday’s rally I had the opportunity to get some video footage of Linda’s grow room.  She had a very nice set up going.  I would write more but I just wanted to throw this up before I make the long drive to Milestone to get my boyfriend.  Enjoy!

A small group of activists, including myself, will be meeting up with Linda Maddaford on Friday, August 14th, 2009.  There will be a rally to support her rights taking place at 2 p.m. in the afternoon in front of city hall.  Here is the link to the Facebook event. The address for city hall in Yorkton is 37 Third Ave North.  Unfortunately, only a few people can go, due to the fact that it is summer and everybody is either at the lake or at work.  The fact that this is last minute short notice doesn’t help either.   It is quite discouraging but you have to do the best that you can do.  Meeting up with Linda will be a very worthwhile thing to do.

Anything you can do to lend support will be greatly appreciated.

Yorkton resident Linda Maddaford had her home invaded by the Yorkton RCMP on August 5th, 2009. Approximately eight vehicles, including civilian vehicles, police cars and vans, raided her house when she wasn’t home. Ms. Maddaford had been a licensed medical marijuana patient for five years and she had been growing for her personal use for three years. When the police came they took her two mother plants. The strain was specific to her medical needs and is gone. The police killed her medical strain and she can not recover it. She was charged with production of two mother plants and possession of controlled substances. She was growing for her own personal medical use. She faces possible jail-time, house arrest and probation. She is no longer able to be bonded.  Her court date is on September 14th, 2009.  The arresting officer was Constable Kaare Bruce Christensen.  The search warrant was signed by Judge G. Rathgeber #2950.

She had been licensed to grow since July 21, 2005 and was legally licensed until July 21, 2008. Her medical marijuana license expired July 21, 2008 after her doctor, a neurologist, Dr. Larry Wine retired due to sudden medical illness. Health Canada required that Ms. Maddaford have her papers signed by a specialist. She tried to find another specialist but none of them will sign her paperwork. She has seen numerous specialists and has talked to neurologist specialists all to no avail. She phoned AIDS specialists at St. Paul’s hospital in Vancouver. They could not assist her. She was told to find a specialist in Saskatchewan. This has proven impossible as many doctors are not accepting new patients and many others are unwilling or unable to sign the paperwork. Her family doctor, Dr. Andres Van Heerden, has been completely supportive of her application for medical marijuana. But the Canadian Medical Association general council policy recommends that physicians not participate in the dispensing of medical marijuana.

The Canadian Medical Association strongly opposes the use of marijuana for medical reasons because they say there is not enough scientific information proving that marijuana is safe and effective medicine. This despite years of scientific research attesting to the effectiveness of marijuana as a medicine. Some of Dr. Wine’s patients have had their forms honored and other patients have not. It appears to be a discriminatory action by Health Canada. She can not get her license renewed without a specialists’ signature and is in legal limbo. She is caught between the cracks of the government. Patients have no protection from persecution.

She is living on social assistance and has been attending school for the last five years. She has been struggling to better herself. She was studying to be a real estate agent. “I need to find a job that will allow me to work in spite of my disability. I really need to get off of government assistance so I can feel good about myself,” Ms. Maddaford said. Her charges mean that she is no longer bondable and will be unable to practice as a real estate agent. She will be unable to cross the US border. She has no money to pay for a lawyer. She goes for an appointment on August 17th to find out if she can qualify for Legal Aid.

Medical marijuana helps relieve her pain and muscle spasms caused by mechanical back pain myofascial pain syndrome onset spondylosis. She also has degenerative arthritis and a right rotary cuff disorder caused by a workplace accident. Her medicine helps her eat because she has issues with her stomach due to prescription drugs. She has restrictions in the flexibility of her arms and shoulders and stiffness in her neck as well as headaches. She has been without her medicine since August 5th, 2009 and has endured headaches, arm numbness, swelling and weakness. She is having difficulty using her fingers due to her symptoms. Her landlord has been supportive of her growing for her personal use and the landlord’s paperwork has been in order.. Her neighbors are devastated that she might be going to jail. There is no other medicine that gives her the quality of life that marijuana has allowed her to achieve. “I would be unable to make it in school without my medicine,” says Ms. Maddaford.

Health Canada has two categories for medical marijuana patients. Category 1 contains patients with terminal cancer and severe degenerative arthritis. They are only required to get their family doctor to sign their paperwork. Category 2 patients covers all other patients and are required to get a specialist to sign their paperwork. Licensed medical marijuana patients are allowed to grow and possess for personal use.

Media can contact Linda Maddaford for an interview by emailing me at tanyaderbowka at gmail.com.

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This blog post title may be the understatement of the week, considering what took place on a radio station in what turned out to be the worst idea ever. A concerned mother wanted to keep her child under control and be labeled a good parent by all the listeners of this ill-advised program. She decided it would be a good idea to hook up her young daughter to a lie detector machine and let total strangers (bantering radioheads) question her about her sexual history and drug use and broadcast this humiliating exchange to thousands of perfect strangers.

Yes, I know it’s the standard fare of Maury and Jerry Springer and Rikki Lake and Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil or whatever popular knob talking head to project bad parenting to the masses but this is my blog and I can hate all those idiots for abusing teenagers in public if I want to. So there!

Being a teenaged girl is bad enough as it is, what with the menstrual cycles, snapped bras, dirty jokes, public school and the perverted boys, without subjecting a girl to this kind of abuse. And this story is bad enough as it is, but hold onto your hats it’s about to get a lot worse.

You see, the teenaged girl had been through a rape a couple of months previous to the show and mom hadn’t felt this detail was important enough to pass on to the questioners. That’s right, the teenaged girl had to tell the world about her sexual assault on the air. At least the questioners had the decency to back off after that revelation but it’s still horrible.

I had a rather unpleasant thought about all this business. What if the teenaged girl had been through an assault and had decided to keep it a secret. Maybe she didn’t want to talk about it with her mom because she didn’t think she would understand or maybe the experience was just too painful. And bantering radioheads asked her about her sexual history and she said that she hadn’t had sex and failed the lie detector test. And then the bantering radioheads and the mom ganged up on the girl in public on the radio about her sex life. It’s a truly appalling thought. That’s the last thing that any girl recovering from a sexual assault would need.

You shouldn’t have to talk about your sex life to people without your consent. But who cares about the rights of teenaged girls! It’s apparently okay to be a mean-spirited bully instead of a parent. Selling ad space in our over-commercialized culture is more important than anything else. Garbage like this is the reason I don’t watch television or listen to the radio anymore. Talk radio is the worst.

Oh but I am not done yet. They tried desperately to make the standard offer of counseling to fix the poor, poor victim. It’s what is offered to sex assault survivors everywhere. “You need counseling.” That is none of your business. And it doesn’t change the fact that you have traumatized someone who already went through a terrible experience. What all survivors everywhere need is for people to quit being insensitive jerks. Counseling is far from being all you need to recover from rape. How about if we send all rape-enablers for some counseling and see how they like it?