On Thursday 27 May 2004, West Shore RCMP officers with a search warrant raided a home and outbuilding on the 5000 block of Mount Matheson Road in East Sooke, the site of the Vancouver Island Therapeutic Cannabis Research Institute.[1][2] The institute was a laboratory-style growing and research facility and the sole supplier for the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, which had provided cannabis to about 390 critically and chronically ill members since 1999.[1][2] Police seized an estimated 900 medicinal cannabis plants in 35 strains; the centre also studied cannabis for chronic pain, nausea and Hepatitis C symptoms and tested its product for cannabinoids, heavy metals and impurities.[2]
Two men were arrested in the raid, one a paid caretaker and the other a friend who had stopped by, and both face charges of growing marijuana and trafficking.[1] Police described the operation as very sophisticated, an assessment society founder Philippe Lucas shared.[1] Lucas called the raid devastating, saying its members would now have to rely on the black market, and said he would challenge the raid’s legality in court.[1][2] He noted Health Canada’s own medicinal cannabis had proved so poor that nearly a third of the 93 federal exemptees who ordered it sent it back.[2] Lucas himself had faced trafficking charges in July 2002, but a judge threw the case out on the grounds that he was trying to lessen the suffering of others.[1]
