(EPITOME OF A MEDICAL MARIJUANA ACTIVIST)

Michelle Rainey; Epitome of a Medical Marijuana Activist 

By: Jef Tek

She is wanted by the U.S. DEA for extradition, the Vice President & Financial Agent of the BC Marijuana Party, the hostess with the most’est of 4 Tokers’ Bowls in Vancouver BC, she has Crohn’s Disease and she is licensed to grow her own medicinal Marijuana by Health Canada. Who is Michelle Rainey…?

Michelle Rainey was brought up in the Health Food and Vitamin industry and raised by her widowed mother Emilie. It was Emilie who taught her the value of hard work, commitment and self-reliance. Michelle was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease when she was 17 and in the middle of a successful 10-year banking career had to undergo two surgeries to remove damaged parts of her bowel, almost dying both times in the process. (Crohn’s Disease has no known cause or cure) She returned to her banking career after each surgery and continued suffering with constant nausea, diarrhea and weight gain due to Prednisone, and other prescription drugs. The doctors had her on a cocktail of the usual medication to curb those nasty symptoms but, of course, nothing to control the actual disease, or the suffering.

Around this time, Bruce, her first husband and childhood friend suggested that she try some Marijuana for her nausea. It worked!!! It relieved her symptoms so much she was able to take herself off of every prescribed medication that she was taking. Medicine that has been doled out by the best doctors and discovered by the best scientists and synthesized in the best pharmacological manufacturing facilities should not kill you. Every one of the drugs she was prescribed was tested and okayed by the Food and Drug associations and even used by some doctors themselves for the same symptoms as she had. She documented the return of her regular weight and health after using only Marijuana to her specialist and general practitioner. Michelle wanted to use medical marijuana but her doctor explained that there was nothing he could do to help her because he didn’t want to suffer the consequences that the Canadian Medical Association would place on him. Michelle was on her own, trying to figure out how she could keep her career and smoke marijuana illegally for her Crohn’s, so that she could work so that she could afford the $80-$100 a week for a bag of pot to keep going without succumbing to the uselessness and debilitation prescription that drugs cause. Prescription drugs were slowly killing her body and her spirit and marijuana was the light at the end of the tunnel. Enter: Marc Emery – Literally!

Vancouver Mayor Phillip Owen had a hard-on for Emery, and from 1997 to 1999 Marc’s store was raided by the Vancouver cops too many times to count. Marc Emery made an exodus to the Sunshine Coast to let the political nonsense in Vancouver blow over. When Marc Emery walked into the bank and up to Michelle’s kiosk, that one magical day, she knew that that was the sign she had been looking for. She told him all about her finding relief from Crohn’s with pot and what a hero he was in her eyes for trying to get marijuana legalized for all the medical users and for all the victims of the drug war in general. Subsequently, not long after their first, chance meeting, Michelle quit her successful banking career to join forces with Emery to help blast marijuana prohibition back to the Stone Age where it belongs. 

Together, Marc and Michelle created the BC Marijuana Party, and the BCMP Bookstore. Did I mention that they sponsored 79 candidates in 79 ridings in the 2001 Canadian federal election? Marc Emery’s political slogan was and has always been, ‘Overgrow the Government’ and in doing such he became the biggest marijuana seed merchant in Canada and maybe even the world. Cannabis Culture magazine was the vehicle that pushed the Marijuana legalization movement in Canada to where it is today and the movement never would have come this far without the100% dedication on the parts of Marc and Michelle. Unfortunately, they have a major hurdle to overcome now that Uncle Sam has declared war on their politics. Is political persecution only a crime if it happens to an American? Ask Saddam – whoops, too late to ask him.

On July 29th 2005 the Vancouver police, in collaboration with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, enforced an American Grand Jury Indictment for Marc Emery, Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams and served it on Canadian soil. The US Government wants to charge these three people with conspiracy charges that could give each of them a 10 year minimum sentence for being political marijuana activists. The maximum sentence would be life in jail without parole, for selling seeds!!! There are thousands of marijuana seed businesses around the world. Not one of these seed businesses puts their profits back to the legalization movement except Emery’s. The funny thing is that those businesses are all still in business, the only seed merchant that the big’bad USA went after was Marc Emery’s. Vancouver’s very-own Larry Campbell, (voted 2006 best Mayor in the World), stated on a recent 60 Minutes television interview when asked if he considered Marc Emery to be a threat to society, I quote,’ Marc Emery isn’t a serious (pause) anything.’ He pissed somebody off on the south side of the border, that’s for sure!

The laws in Canada regarding medical cannabis have changed for Michelle and she has finally been able to petition for and receive her Medical Marijuana Exemption to grow her own medicine. Blessed with a sympathetic, socially’conscious, highly intelligent and upstanding medical specialist, she got her papers signed. Now Michelle is legally allowed to grow 49 marijuana plants. Under the Health Canada guidelines, Crohns Disease was a class 2 disease until 2005 but, ironically enough, is a class 1 disease in the Country that wants to Extradite ‘Try’ and Jail Michelle for the rest of her already compromised life. How can a Country (Canada) send a medically exempted person with a class 1 disease to stand trial in a Country (America) that says marijuana has no medical value? Will the courts let her smoke her medicine while on trial? Their extradition hearing begins in May 2007.

This is Michelle’s daily purpose, to educate the educators and to persuade the legislatures of this world that marijuana is medicine and it should be legalized. In addition to coping with Crohn’s, working full time and fighting extradition proceedings, she has launched www.MichelleRainey.com to spread the word about her real-life story and how marijuana is saving it. There’s a real’time marijuana news update. There are links to all the people and organizations that support legalized marijuana and her ‘pictures of health’ file that clearly demonstrates that she is fit and beautiful despite the situation she now finds herself in. Michelle has helped 13 Canadians receive their medical marijuana exemptions. The whole process of filling out the correct paperwork and getting the required doctors signatures is not easy, even for a healthy person, when you add a debilitating illness to the equation this only compounds the difficulty. Michelle helps patients by facilitating the paperwork and answering the questions that these patients desperately need answered so they can successfully petition to treat themselves with marijuana. Have you ever had to fill out 25 pages of documents and get a specialists signature just to get a prescription for Tylenol? (Nobody has ever died from Tylenol though, have they?) 

Confused? Don’t be, the truth is always simpler than lies and mendacity. Human beings most’likely learned to farm by growing and harvesting marijuana, some believe marijuana may be the tree of life or the key to man’s conscious awareness, some simply find relief with marijuana that all the pharmaceuticals in the world would not cure, Michelle is this person. She wants you to treat yourself, with a little help from nature, medicinal marijuana is not a dirty word anymore. You simply cannot overdose on pot. 

Now visit her website, then write your senator, congressman or Member of Parliament; call someone you know who has debilitating side effects from prescription meds and ask them if they have tried pot. Write a letter to Karen Tandy, the head of the DEA in Washington, D.C. who thought up the idea to make an example of Marc Emery, Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams. Welcome Canada’s new minister of justice the Honourable Robert Douglas Nicholson, it is free for Canadians to send mail to Parliament Hill. Watch JefTekGrowcam and MichelleRainey videos on YouTube and Pot TV, see Michelle’s Medical Garden of Afghani Bullrider then make your own video and submit it to YouTube or Pot TV for everyone to watch and share. Pass the knowledge, please. We are all in this together.

To many, Michelle is an angel. Her whole life revolves around helping others. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her whole body. Now Michelle needs your help, your support, because she can’t do this alone. This is the true meaning of the word ACTIVIST. Be Active. If you aren’t living on the edge then you are takin’ up too much space. 

Revised Jan 12, 2007 jt