On Medical and Recreational Marijuana.

Someone was telling me about medical marijuana. I’m a bit of a skeptic in terms of some of the claimed benefits.

It might reduce inflammation, it might kill pain or restore the appetite of someone wasting away from the nausea related to chemotherapy. The marijuana liquids may be of some use to those whose lungs are shot, and yet I strongly doubt that it has much ‘healing powers’. It’s not going to cure your cancer, in spite of stories on Facebook that claim otherwise. Corporate interests will be producing a product. Their claims for the efficacy of this drug aren’t very credible in my opinion, especially when it is presented as a be-all, cure-all sort of a product.

Nothing is ever simple, is it?

The legalization of marijuana for medical purposes is one aspect of an ongoing debate, the legalization or decriminalization is another.

If medical marijuana is a legitimate medical expense, then it will also be a legitimate medical deduction on your income taxes. The world really has changed, when people are saving their receipts for an income tax deduction. And if a person is a client of the Ontario Disability Support Program, at some point, one must expect that it will turn up in the ODSP Approved Drug Book, which all physicians in Ontario refer to when prescribing for clients of the ODSP. That’s because medications are expensive. ODSP clients are covered for the Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan, (OHIP), there are drug benefits, and there are also eye-glass and dental benefits. Simply put, doctors don’t want to prescribe something the patient can’t afford and probably won’t buy, and so they refer to the book. The other thing is, they're looking for generics, as the ODSP buys on price--hence the prevalence of bug-juice like Larazepam.

So, at some point, the ODSP will be buying medical marijuana for those who have been prescribed the drug. People’s insurance companies will be paying for medical marijuana.

Hospitals may have to dispense it to in-patients, and provide smoking areas, or more likely rely on the liquid forms of the drug.

If police pull over a vehicle and the driver has medical marijuana in their possession, and the proper medical license to show the officer, there’s not much they can do except make an assessment of the level of impairment. Does the car smell like smoke? Are they slurring their words, are the eyes all pink? What answers have they provided to certain basic questions? 

Did they seem evasive…are there other drugs or alcohol present? What about persons of minor age in the vehicle. The list goes on.

Many prescribed meds can lead to diminished capacity to operate motor vehicles and heavy machinery. If you are impaired, the marijuana might be legal—what you did with it may not be.

You can still get in trouble, you can still break the law, and presumably, you can still lose the license to consume medical marijuana. Attempting to enter another country where it is not legal will still be an offense in that country.

***

Some (or much) of the same holds true for the legalized or decriminalized use of recreational marijuana.

The day that recreational pot use is legalized, the typical corporate landlord will probably be sending all tenants a letter and a legal document. They will lay out a new set of rules (more accurately, the first set of rules), regarding the growing of recreational marijuana in their buildings. If tenants refuse to sign and return such a document, the landlord may very well initiate eviction proceedings. Because they know what you’re going to do, don’t they?

Bear in mind, you don't have to actually grow dope to get evicted. All you really have to do is refuse to sign the document.

Homeowners may have the legal right to grow four pot plants on their own property.

Proposed legislation states that it must not be visible to the public. If someone can see into your backyard and they see pot plants, you may very well get a visit from the police or by-law control officer.

This goes double for people that want to grow pot on the apartment balcony—it must not be visible from the street, presumably from other tenants’ balconies, and not easily accessible to children or underage persons.

Now, if you want to grow pot in the bedroom closet, imagine, if you will, how the landlord is going to enjoy paying the electricity bill on that. While some apartments have separate meters for each unit, many don’t.

The landlord already has the right of inspection. It’s in the typical lease.

With 24 hours notice, they can come in, inspect the smoke alarm, change the battery, etc. If you’ve given notice, they can inspect, or they can show it to prospects with proper notice.

In the future, staff will be using their noses. They’ll try and determine if you’re growing pot, ‘against the terms of the lease’. This is all no-brainer stuff and yet a lot of the more immature or irresponsible tenants will be inclined to take a chance. Landlords are just going to love the jury-rigged, lash-up electrical systems that will be used in some cases. Their insurance company won't like it much either.

They’re not going to like the smell of pot plants wafting through the entire building.

The pressure on the landlord to jack rents across the board will be considerable given that their electrical bills are going up, up, and up some more…

A simple little change in the law reveals a rat’s nest of further implications, all or most of which must be anticipated before the law can even be written.

END


Read this previous post on marijuana legalization in Canada.


Thank you for reading.

Punching Through Those Personal Barriers.

Photo by Robert A. Hoover.

Ian Cooper

When Chuck Yeager broke through the sound barrier, it was not so much a personal achievement as a scientific breakthrough, a leap forward for mankind. It was an epoch-making event.

Sometimes people need to break through their own personal barriers. 

And if you ever hit rock bottom, and decide not to stay there, there are all kinds of barriers to getting back up again.

People hit rock bottom for all kinds of reasons.

It can be drugs or alcohol, it can be divorce, or bankruptcy, a serious illness in the family, or an accident in the car, the workplace or in sport.

It’s never that simple, either.

It’s never any one thing that throws a person to the bottom of the heap. Issues feed on each other and contribute to the whole picture of that person. A person forced out of work due to an injury may become dependent on painkillers. They may get depressed, and suffer from financial problems. They may turn to drink, a bad mix with those painkillers…begin fighting with the spouse, et cetera. It all builds on itself until a situation spirals out of control. It can happen quickly.

There are the questions of character, and then there are the questions of circumstance. If your spouse is killed by a drunk driver, leaving you solely responsible for three small children under the age of seven, that is a circumstance. How a person deals with such tragedy indicates something about their character.

It reflects not just the choices that they made, but the choices that they had to begin with, for surely choices are limited at the best of times. Sometimes there are no good choices.

There is no such thing as choosing the lesser of two evils, sometimes. Based on the reader’s own personal experience, isn’t it really more a matter of choosing between a whole bunch of lesser and greater evils, some of which involve pain, suffering or sacrifice on our own parts and so we don’t want to do them? A good example would involve quitting smoking. Smokers know they need to quit, the problem is, they also know it’s going to hurt—and so they continually put it off. And of course it never happens.

So here’s my personal sound barrier: how do I take, what is at most a couple of hundred bucks in book and story sales per month, less than a grand a year essentially, and push it through that magical barrier, where I can get off the Ontario Disability Support Program and live on the proceeds of my work?

I read a lot of blogs, many by long-standing professional writers. Mention has been made of ‘editors with a million dollars to spend,’ or ‘hundred-thousand dollar advances.’

It’s true that would be enough to get me off disability. The problem is that the more likely scenario involves a five, or ten, or twenty thousand dollar advance. I would be an unknown, first-time author in a pretty big pond.

Some would say that I would be extremely fortunate to get that. Not everyone gets the professional book contract, after all.

And they would be correct to a certain extent.

In fact; they’re absolutely right.

Not everyone gets the chance.

The trouble is that at a certain level, I would be giving up the benefits, with small chance of qualifying ever again. That’s because I would have to prove to a tribunal that I could no longer write, not just no longer haul 12” concrete blocks around in wheelbarrows, or weld, or carry ladders around on job sites. It’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish at that point. The onus of proof is always on the client or applicant in this particular system.

The other scenario involves continuing to build up the independently-published book sales, simply by writing more, and following that curve as best one can these days. It really is early days and information goes out of date notoriously fast. The fact that I am selling any books at all proves that it can be done, I’m just not doing it well enough…or something.

Even then, in terms of my personal sound barrier, there’s a time where we’re at Mach .95 and there’s a lot of buffeting and you need to be structurally sound. You have to have the surplus power to punch through that barrier. Otherwise you’re going to break up and it’s game over at that point.

Living in a one-roomer, lining up at the soup kitchen and the food bank, and earning four or five hundred a month (when you’re lucky) is a distinct possibility if one should lose the pension for any reason.

It really wouldn’t be worth it on those terms. You can do exactly the same thing and not have to work at all. It’s called Welfare, right? Why bust your ass putting in sixty or eighty hours a week of thankless and minimally-paid work just for the privilege of calling yourself a writer. I know, we’re supposed to do it for the love, but you have to be practical as well.

At that rate, I might as well stay on ODSP, make my hundred or two a month—and maybe be a grand a month ahead some months on that deal. We know book sales fluctuate pretty markedly for reasons that are difficult to analyze and therefore predict.

If there was a quick way to go from a couple hundred a month in sales, to two thousand a month, I suppose someone would have to be a fool not to do it.

Punching through that barrier involves questions of circumstance, and questions of character. There are questions of knowledge and application, and then there is the factor of time.

For all we know, simply plugging away and doing exactly what I’m doing now may turn out to be the right path, over time. 

There is also a kind of psychological barrier to be overcome.

***

They say there’s a certain amount of luck involved and they are probably right.

Here’s what happens if I get a $20,000 advance one month. I immediately lose $1,100 roughly, that’s my pension cheque for that month. Then the ODSP says I owe them fifty cents on the dollar from the ‘earnings.’ 

That costs $10,000, add that to the eleven hundred. Then the ODSP tells me that I got too much money in the bank, and that I must spend it down—as long as I don’t spend it on food, shelter or clothing. I can only have six or seven grand in the bank. So I would have to go out and piss away three grand by the end of the month. Then I would be back to getting my pension chequel and yes, I would have six grand in the bank, or whatever I'm allowed.

I would still also be on ODSP. It's either that or taking my full advance, going off ODSP and living in that one-roomer I told you about earlier.

That's where the psychological barrier really comes in. That's because I now have an actual, one-bedroom apartment and that monthly pension coming in.

I don’t know about that personal (possibly even psychological) barrier any more than Chuck Yeager did—I mean, I think it is possible, it’s just a question of going for it when we’ve got everything right.

It's a question of having all of our shit together.

It could be a while yet.

END

My Old Apartment

My 'allergies' are clearing up nicely now, two years later.

My sister was shocked when I told her I paid $8,000 in rent last year.

That’s enough to buy a house, but of course people on the Ontario Disability Support Program can’t get a mortgage—maybe that’s a half-truth. I once went to the bank and they were prepared to give me a mortgage of $30,000. They wanted a down payment of $15,000. So they would have lent me $15,000, at about six percent as I recall.

You can’t buy a house for $30,000 unless it’s in Taliban country or at the extemities of the Earth.

There are no services in Taliban country or at the extremities of the Earth. No plumbing, no heat, no electricity, and of course your investment is uninsurable.

(Without insurance, you can’t get a mortgage. Catch-22, don’t you know.)

With a house, it’s not just the mortgage payment. There is heat, hydro, insurance, property taxes, and water, which includes a lot of hidden charges for ‘delivery’ and surcharges for past debt. Also, in this town at least, some of the price-jacking on the property taxes is stuck in the water bill.

City Council talks big about ‘diversification,’ mostly before election time but not much afterwards.

The Province of Ontario talks big about ‘poverty reduction’ before elections, but not much afterwards. It is a slogan, nothing more, and the bourgeoisie buys into it, but then they are all cynics and hypocrites and they all know it is bullshit.

I owned a house once. Before I bought it, I did a budget and came up with a figure of $675.00 a month average. My ODSP income was $930.00 a month at the time, and I knew it would be a tough go. I knew I’d be going to the food bank, and I knew I wouldn’t have a car, and I knew I’d be sponging smokes off anybody that had ‘em…but at least you are building equity in a piece of property, and my grandmother was kind enough to give me $1,500 for a down payment.

For a while there, it felt good to own a home, although my working class neighbours didn’t like it much. They had to get up and go to work in the morning, while I was ‘sponging off the system.’

One of the neighbours told me that once. He was self-employed, although he has since gotten hired to work for the city, at about $25.00 an hour for unskilled labour.

Who’s sponging now, (insert disparaging term of choice, but mine is very naughty.)

(It rhymes with fuzzy sock licker, sort of.)

In summer, it might be less, in winter, it would be more. That included a mortgage payment of $292.00 per month on $50,000 amortized over 25 years.

Now, buying a trailer is different. The lot fees run anywhere from $350.00 a month up to over four hundred, possibly higher depending on where you live. This includes the lease and water, as well as the property taxes. 

If nothing else, you get a place to live out of it.

You can get a trailer for as little as $6-12,000, and I have looked at trailers in the $27,000 range. I’ve seen them as high as $72,000. The six thousand dollar one was a wreck. It had been gutted inside. As soon as I bought it, it would have been condemned.

There would still be heat, hydro, and obviously home insurance is a must if you have a mortgage—that only makes sense.

My home insurance went from $220.00 a year when I moved in, (in 1999) up to about $465.00 four years later. One month (February) in winter I had a $270.00 gas bill. For two months in the summer, there was no gas bill. Then I could at least eat.

Trailers are nowhere as well insulated as the typical home as the walls are only two inches thick.

Even so, they are smaller and the heating would be less, on average. The hydro might be less, but typically I run one or two lights, a computer, and air conditioning in summer. I’m fairly frugal in that regard, and I do have some respect for this planet, and never run Christmas lights, and all that sort of thing.

When I owned that home, my property taxes went from about $1,400 a year to over $1,800.00 a year within four years. I once used eleven dollars worth of water in a six-month billing period but the bill was more like two hundred due to all the ‘hidden’ charges.

Poverty is endemic to our system. It’s built in. My sister was shocked at that tax rate incidentally, as she only pays about $1,200 a year for a small bungalow similar to the one I had, but my name is Mudd in this town. 

You can attempt to appeal to the property tax assessment people, which is a provincial agency, even though property taxes are a municipal affair.

(Good luck on that, by the way.)

Municipal taxes have provincial sanction ever since the province downloaded certain costs of social programs onto the municipality.

Bureaucratic harassment of the disabled is also endemic here in Ontario, which is in Canada, one of the greatest countries in the world by all accounts.

I had no problem renting my present pad.

My credit checked out, and in fact my credit rating is surprisingly high for a guy on ODSP. That’s because I am a responsible adult and I pay my bills first and eat later.

In some sense, ODSP subsidizes landlords. They know it is a secure and steady income (disability is for life) even though the bank sees it as high risk.

(I don’t know if anyone has ever escaped the ODSP, but as an officer and a gentleman, my duty is to escape.)

(Or at least give ‘em hell whenever I can.)

You can’t really get a mortgage on a trailer.

That’s because it’s movable and the bank figures you’ll stop paying and drag the thing off somewhere else, an expensive process involving permits and fees and of course the cost of the contractor. It’s helpful if you have someplace to go.

I once signed up for geared to income housing. I’m not stupid, and I thought it was the right thing to do, according to all conventional wisdom. And almost two years went by. We took all the ‘facts’ into account.

When we knew my old man was going into the old age home and his house was to be sold, I called the Sarnia-Lambton Housing Authority.

I had been told the waiting period was about two years for a single person. My number was supposed to come up in ‘May or June’ according to them, right?

We kept my old man in his own home as long as we possibly could, and it was reaching a crisis point. We did the best we could for him. He went into the old age home in February 2011.

So I called up, as my old man’s house sale was closing July 15—I lived there in the basement while looking after him—and they told me something special.

They said they wouldn’t have anything until September or October.

I had no choice but to rent an apartment, right? Geared to income housing is pegged at one-third of income. 

Now I pay, according to my calculations, more like sixty percent of my income—rich people are smarter than that, as I’m sure most will agree.

Imagine my disgust when I had moved into my apartment, and paid over $1,500 up front to move in. 

Imagine my disgust when there was a noise problem from the landlord’s kid, living below me rent-free while he saved up to go to university. I was paying all the costs of the house I was in, with some left over, probably a couple of grand a year, for clear ‘profit.’

I paid first and last, and of course the landlord wanted thirty days notice of leaving, oh, yeah, and one week later, the Housing people were calling my alternate number, i.e. my mom’s place, and they said they had a placement for me.

One week later, ladies and gentlemen. That’s why I call them bad things.

I sent the Housing Authority a letter stating that if they ever tried to contact me or my family again, I would call the police and charge them with criminal harassment.

Don’t you ever talk to me about a ‘sense of entitlement.’

All human beings are entitled to food, shelter and clothing. That’s the position of the United Nations and I won’t contradict them because they are big, important people who wear suits and ties and make the papers every stinking day.

Some would argue that everything we do in life involves some moral choice. I would retort that back on the government, this city, the bourgeoisie and anyone else who will listen.

If you don’t like that, you can pull a black hood over your face, and come around here and kill me.

You see how it is, don’t you?

I know who you are.

It is never a mistake to stand up for the disabled, the mentally ill, the working poor, and plenty of other unfortunate people in this town, your town, any town you care to name.

I live in Ontario. Someday I will tell you about how the pigs got me out of that house. Perhaps someone else will tell the story, but I doubt if they have the fuckin’ balls.