We Spoke to a New Zealander Defying the Law to Make Medicinal Cannabis Oil

From the veranda, the green fields of Northland stretch away towards the coast, the sun beats down, and our conversation is punctuated by the periodic clicking of a lighter reigniting a spliff. I have driven an hour and a half north of Auckland to meet a man making medicinal marijuana products, whose name, for obvious reasons, we won't reveal. We chat about his operation – him in a Wutang cap, drinking from a Metallica mug – as chickens peck through the overgrown vegetable garden and a Neil Young track is just audible from indoors, where his father sits next to the stereo. He has a smoke. "I've got a lot of stuff to do today, so I'm just trying to chill out so I can carry on with the day," he says.

That stuff is the preparation of medicinal marijuana, which he talks VICE through as we sit in his bedroom. As he works – first bouncing weed through mesh onto a mirror to isolate the tiny hair-like trichomes and make kief – we talk about how he got into medical marijuana, and the benefits he has seen, both in himself and in his clients.

VICE: How did you come to believe in the medicinal properties of weed?
I first started growing when I was about 18, probably, and I'm 30 now. When I was young I suffered from ADHD and depression. I found that having a hyperactive mind and occasionally getting depressed were remedied by smoking cannabis, so I realised there was definitely more to it than what met the eye, you know. I had some really fucked up shit go down and I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I found a lot of information saying how good cannabis was for PTSD. A light bulb just went on in my head. I was like: I knew this all along. I was actually feeling sick off one of the drugs I was taking and I just felt like the doctors and the government were basically lying to me because I had seen the results from the cannabis and I had seen what they were trying to give me, and after going off that stuff I started feeling a lot better after using cannabis again. I still suffer from PTSD, but with the cannabis I keep it at bay.

How did this turn into a medicinal marijuana operation?
I came up here a few years ago and just struggled to find work so I went back to landscaping and stuff, which eventually led me to getting back into growing. When I started learning all this stuff about the medical side of it, I thought, well, if I'm getting rid of stuff already, I'd rather it be going to people who really genuinely need it. I looked into it, and that's when I linked up with the Green Cross . And that's basically how I operate. I find people through the Green Cross, or they find me. Hearing the feedback from people is just mainly what has kept me persevering with it.

What do you make?
I do a few different things – I do tinctures, I do balms, but the main thing I do is oil.

What do your clients suffer from?
At the moment I've got one main client – she's my main one because she needs quite a lot and she needs high-quality, and that's why I make her the purest form, the oil, Rick Simpson oil it's called. It's really potent so you only need a tiny amount. She puts it in capsules. She started with a grain of rice-sized amount, and that's enough for pain relief for a good couple of hours.
She's had a lot of bad side effects from the anti-cancer medication. Chemotherapy and opiates and strong pharmaceutical drugs really damage other parts of your body and her central nervous system seems to have been damaged because she's got real trouble with her right arm. She started getting really good results from the capsules and her first words were, after she took it, was that her arm had come alive.
I've got another one with cancer, I've got a guy who had a car accident and he was actually prescribed Sativex – one of the few people in New Zealand who have gone through the ordeal to get that. It's $1300 or something ridiculous for a tiny little amount. It's the same tincture, basically, as what I make, except I don't think it's as good. When I was growing the plants, mine was free. I'm not making that at the moment, I'm just making the oil, and that's what I've been making today.

So your products just get people really baked?
What some people call the high – that psychoactive feeling – is the same feeling that a medicinal user like myself is getting, it's just that some people call it medicating and some people call it getting high. I mean, what is "high"? It feels good, you're releasing endorphins in your brain, you feel calm and relaxed. In my opinion it's not like other drugs where it's extremely psychoactive and you're out of it. Like, right now I'm smoking and I'm just the same as if I wasn't, I'm just a little bit more relaxed. Sometimes with my PTSD I get a bit anxious, and I just find it really helps, man.
But there can be a big difference between getting high and being medicated. For instance, a child with epilepsy can be medicated very efficiently with cannabis oil but you don't want them high obviously, so you can bring the THC down through selective breeding and bring other cannabinoids up so it doesn't have a psychoactive effect but it still has those medicinal effects. And that is exactly what I was doing with my plants: I was crossbreeding certain strains that I had imported from Holland, America, all over the place, specifically with that intention.

How much do you charge?
I don't like the idea of making money off it – I've never really made any money off it and I've never really been keen on the idea of profiting from it. I always say to the punters: if they want to pay me for it, that's cool. If not, then I do it because, like I say, I've seen these amazing results and I've seen people's lives improve, including my own. I think I'm doing the right thing. I'm not hurting anyone; I don't break the law in any other way.

Have you had any problems with the cops?
Back in March there were a few plants here and the cops came and took those away, so I'm just still going through court over that at the moment. It's like banging my head against a brick wall: it's slow and arduous. I had 140 plants. I actually had 125, but they wrote down 140.

How has that affected you?
Since then it's been a lot more difficult because I haven't had my own source material – I've had to source it from elsewhere, and that's one of the reasons I grew in the first place so I knew exactly what I was getting when it came to source material. It was really nice, high-grade – I'd taken every precautionary measure there was, paying a lot of attention to producing fine quality, organic plants. Since then it's been a real pain trying to get hold of some. But, like I say, I've been managing to continue with what I do. It's just a lot more expensive this way. You don't know exactly what you're getting. [When I grow it] I know exactly how it's grown and I know exactly the strain and when you're talking about medicine, the strain is quite important

What are your plans for the future?
My plan is to actually wait until this legal issue blows over and hopefully move somewhere I can do this legally. Because I've been doing this a long time now and I'm clearly helping people. I know that I'm doing the right thing. The laws are just way behind here, and the rest of the world is realising that slowly. Things are changing rapidly at the moment and it's only a matter of time before it gets legalised, but I'm not really willing to stick around and put my family through any more grief by breaking the law.

Do you see the law changing?
As long as this current government is still in power, they are adamant that nothing is going to change.

Why are lawmakers in New Zealand so against medical marijuana?
It goes back to what we're taught at school, you know. We're taught to stay away from the stuff, that drugs are bad and they don't teach you what their effects really are. They take a very biased stance on what drugs actually do to people. I've learned through my own experience that most drugs are bad news, but I don't see cannabis as a drug. I never really have. It's just a plant.

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