Posted on 11/01/2003 9:04:19 AM PST by Loyalist
CREDIT: Jonathan Hayward, The Canadian Press
Don Appleby died of his injuries suffered in an Oct. 12 explosion while he was trying to make a concentrated oil using marijuana and butane.
Don Appleby's fight against the aids virus that was sapping him was made more difficult by a tragic paradox. While the Ottawa man was one of the few Canadians who could legally smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes, he could rarely afford it due to his minuscule disability pension.
In the end, he was killed in the struggle to produce the drug that was helping him survive.
On Oct. 12, Mr. Appleby was in the bathroom of his Blake Boulevard apartment, trying a dangerous method to get some use out of the non-smokable parts of his marijuana plants.
By injecting butane into a plastic container with the plant in it, he hoped to make a concentrated oil he could use. Friends suspect he then tried to light a joint, igniting an explosion that blew the bathroom door off its hinges.
Residents of the apartment above his heard the explosion, and rushed him to the Ottawa Hospital's General campus. It's where he remained in intensive care since the incident, and where he died Thursday morning.
Ron Whelan was Mr. Appleby's close friend, and was living under the same circumstances. He said yesterday that Mr. Appleby never should have died the way he did.
Both 44, they received about $900 a month on disability, not nearly enough to pay for both marijuana and food. While the government would pay for the $1,500-$2,000 of aids medication Mr. Appleby needed, they wouldn't pick up the cost of the marijuana. Nausea was a side-effect of the pills, and without the drug, he couldn't keep them down.
Forced to buy marijuana himself and pay rent, his friends say Mr. Appleby was reduced to scrounging through dumpsters to find the food he could no longer afford. He would go searching behind restaurants late at night so nobody would see him. At the same time, he wasn't shy about asking people with marijuana gardens to help him.
"You do what you have to do to survive, whether it's beg, borrow or steal," Mr. Whelan said. If one had a bag of dry macaroni from the food bank, he would often go to the other's place to share.
Mr. Appleby decided to try and save some money by growing his own marijuana, and after two failed gardens, things were starting to work out for him. Still, the cost to grow was still high. With no other source of medicine, he resorted to the butane method. He never recovered from the burns that covered 75 per cent of his body and his scorched lungs.
Mr. Whelan said although Mr. Appleby experienced difficult times in the past, he really blossomed after meeting people similar to him. He loved participating in marijuana rallies, and helping others.
"The world needs more people like Donny," he said. "He was there for the underdog, and it's a terrible loss for everyone who knew him."
Mr. Whelan said he doesn't blame the government for what happened to his friend, but said it should take more responsibility and provide for people like him.
© Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen
Gotta love those canucky's. "Clotted cream" is probably homemade cool whip and the canucky's probably look their nose down at us, for using cool whip.
I made Sunday dinner yesterday for my parents and if I would had served the pumpkin pie with "clotted cream", instead of "cool whip", they would have given me a look saying "what the F you talking about".
Amazing how different words about the same thing can mean different things to people.
Loyalist, just to show that I ain't 100% anti-Canucky, and as a twist of fate one of Canada's greatest exports best tune came on my local radio station, BTO with "Taking care of Business".
You all take care.
Truth hurts, huh?
My personal consistent principle? I would say, "1) According to the manner in which the product is advertised for use, and/or 2) According to the manner in which the product is actually used.
When applying the above, I take into consideration the scope (if any) of the legitimate use of the product.
Remember the McDonalds plastic coffee stirrers that had a little spoon at the end? Turns out that the spoon was exactly .1 cc, the ideal heroin dose. That met my #1, but failed #2.
If you take this as a personal ad hominem, then maybe next time you'll phrase the question differently.
Why would I want to go preach to the choir, when I can educate FR lurkers by thumping WODdies here?
I just wanted to be sure he waasn't setting himself up for a disappointment.
Thanks for the baseless and worthless opinion.
Truth hurts, huh?
Provide evidence for your claim that it is the truth that not very many lurkers come to these threads.
Partly true.
First, we don't have a "problem" with people using butane to squeeze out the last drops of THC from low-content hemp.
Second, IF it became a problem, we'd have to ask ourselves why it became a problem (ie., what's different).
Third, IF it was determined that some kind of restriction on butane was the solution, then I proposed a voluntary addition of impurities to the butane by the manufacturer.
Lastly, IF those voluntary additions weren't being done, then I stated that I would go to plan B, federal mandatory addition.
Nowhere, ever, did I say that butane should be criminalized, or that butane should be banned.
Totally off topic. Shows that a pro-druggie doesn't think very clearly.
Henry Anslinger's (the father of the Drug War) comments about white women having sex with black jazz musicians has as much validity as your claim that pot kills brain cells.
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