/Wade Andrew View Wade Andrew's photo essay on Andy Caisse (popup / flash required)

When you think of a mother's duties, what comes to mind? Probably things like bandaging scraped knees, wiping runny noses and seeing the children off to school on time. For Rose Caisse, you can add rolling her son Andy's joints to her list of motherly responsibilities. Thirty-four-year-old Andy Caisse has Multiple Sclerosis, a degenerative disease affecting the central nervous system, and he is one of 666 Canadians (as of November 1, 2002) who can legally possess and smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes. One of Caisse's MS symptoms is trembling in his hands. Smoking marijuana helps to control the tremors, but he has trouble rolling a joint, so mom helps out. "If I had to roll my own," Caisse says, he would drop so much pot on the floor that "my dogs would be stoned all the time."

Caisse's sense of humour helps him deal with his illness, but something he doesn't find funny is the red tape he is faced with when trying to legally obtain his weed. The Canadian government loosened its pot laws in June 1999 to allow people with certain illnesses to legally possess marijuana, and after fighting through the 29-page application, Caisse got his clearance in November 2001.

Health Canada issued him an ID card that allows him to possess up to 120 grams at any one time. At the same time they gave him a licence to grow his own weed, which he says is a joke. Caisse has been confined to a wheelchair since 1995, and lacks the energy and mobility to look after a complicated grow operation.

"It would be impossible to grow my own", he says.

His mother agrees. "A sick person can't grow plants," she says. "They take on the ambiance of the person."

So he has been forced to illegally obtain a substance that is legal for him to possess. When he first started smoking pot to ease his symptoms, his mother would buy it from local dealers at the neighborhood bar down the street.

"I felt like a criminal," she says. "I'm 54-years-old and I was out buying marijuana."

Still, Rose has no qualms about helping her son, something she says any mother would do. "I'm not ashamed to buy drugs for my son. I would go to jail for him," she says from the living room of the tiny central Winnipeg house she rents with her son.

There are several different types of MS, and the symptoms can be very distressing. Some of Caisse's symptoms include tremors, poor appetite and sleeplessness, all of which are eased by smoking marijuana, he says.

"Some days my hands tingle, some days I'm twitching severely," and smoking his average one-gram - or three joints - a day helps enormously, he says.

Caisse, who claims to get no enjoyment from smoking pot aside from the medicinal benefits, refuses to take any of his prescribed medications, believing marijuana helps him more than anything. He says some of the needles his doctor gave him resulted in severe bruising, and one medication had him so hopped-up he was like the "Energizer bunny."

Since Caisse started smoking pot, he has gotten it from a variety of illegal sources. But according to Health Canada's Marihuana Medical Access Regulations, a person with an authorization to possess marijuana can designate someone else to grow his pot for him. Not an easy task, says Caisse. The application process for the grower is complicated and intimidating, and the stigma associated with growing marijuana, even for compassionate reasons, is enough to scare most people away.

But in May 2001, Caisse met Chris Buors at a "legalize marijuana" rally in front of the Manitoba Legislature. Buors is the founder of the Manitoba Compassion Club, an organization that sells pot to people with a medical need for the drug. Compassion Club members get a cut rate, a consistent quality, and Buors delivers; a much safer environment for Caisse to buy his pot, but it's still illegal. In 1998, Buors was convicted of possession for the purpose of trafficking, so he is ineligible to be a designated grower.

However, in early 2002, Buors introduced Caisse to "Steve," who doesn't want his real name used, who agreed to be Andy's personal grower. Enter more frustration. Steve applied for his designated grower licence in July 2002, and Health Canada assured him it would take about two weeks to process. Two-and-a-half months and several phone calls later, Steve was told they couldn't issue his grow licence until Caisse renewed his possession licence. So in mid-November, when Caisse's licence came up for renewal, both licences finally arrived in the mail.

Now Steve can legally grow for Caisse, but it still takes several months to cultivate useable bud from freshly planted cannabis seeds, so Caisse waits.

"It's frustrating for everybody," says Steve, a 49-year-old father and hobbyist gardener. "It's been legislated, it should be black-and-white."

Steve says he finds the whole process "intriguing as well as extremely frustrating," and he would like to see the government take a clearer stance on the marijuana issue, though he doesn't smoke pot himself.

"They keep waffling all over the moral map," he says.

Brant Cosens, a friend of Caisse's and a fellow MS sufferer, agrees. Cosens is in the process of trying to get his licence to smoke pot, but his neurologist has refused to sign the application. He is trying to convince her, but he doesn't hold much hope. His previous neurologist also refused.

"He thinks the last wonder drug was penicillin," says Cosens.

Cosens says he thinks doctors are afraid of damaging their professional reputations by writing "prescriptions for weed."

Caisse may face a similar problem next year. His neurologist told him that next year he's not going to sign his renewal application, because he's afraid of losing his medical licence. Caisse is confident his family doctor will sign next year's papers, but it's one more frustration for a sick man who is supposed to avoid stress.