By James Lang
With all the political hair-pulling and media sensationalizing over medical cannabis, it’s easy to forget that at the center of the matter is compassion—the concept of caring for those in need of care.
Very quietly, in private homes and offices and coffeehouses across Southern California, a growing band of committed activists are working—often at great personal risk—toward fulfilling the original intent of the state’s Compassionate Use program. And while so many others are reaping huge financial benefits from cannabis, these unassuming foot soldiers are giving their all for free.
The Cannabis Sanctuary is a 100-member-strong organization that works to provide cannabis medicine to qualified patients who can’t afford it. Every day, field workers for the sanctuary’s individual charters (chapters presently exist in San Diego and the Inland Empire, and are starting up in Los Angeles and Orange County) fan out to deliver medicine to the region’s most needy patients—the chronically ill, the destitute, the bed- and wheelchair bound. The members take nothing for their service but gratitude.
The sanctuary is a secular offshoot of the San Diego-based Ministry of Hope, a church founded three years ago by the Rev. Paul Smalley. The church’s doctrine is based on the teachings of Christ, Buddha and Baruch Spinoza—a 17th-century philosopher who believed, among other things, that God and nature were the same. As such, the ministry teaches, cannabis is a sacrament with the power to save and heal the world.
“Spinoza had a take on nature that didn’t distinguish between nature and God,” Smalley says. “If you destroy something natural, you’re destroying a piece of God.”
Cannabis, says Smalley, is unique among other natural gifts in that—aside from its medicinal benefits—it’s a highly renewable and environmentally-friendly source of energy, fiber and food. The ministry believes that the wholesale conversion to cannabis-based industries would eliminate the single biggest threat to God/nature—global warming.
Realizing that the ministry’s religious leanings might prevent many from hearing its core message of environmentalism and helping the less fortunate, Smalley and others formed the Cannabis Sanctuary about a year and a half ago. The sanctuary promotes many of its parent’s environmental and charitable ideals, but is entirely nonreligious in its mission and purpose.
I sat down recently with Smalley and three of the five members of the Inland Empire Cannabis Sanctuary, whose natural leader is a 38-year-old Gulf War Marine veteran named Donovan. Donovan, his wife Theresa and friend and sanctuary member Jerry asked that their last names not be used.
Donovan came home from the war a lance corporal and permanently disabled by a back injury from rappelling out of helicopters. Doctors with the Veteran’s Administration prescribed him dozens of opiate-based medications for his injuries, but he eventually gravitated to cannabis as a better way to treat symptoms related to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and back pain.
“I talked to the VA doctor about prescribing cannabis, and he just shot down the idea,” he says. “Then I was told I had terminal cancer.”
Donovan was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer associated with asbestos exposure. He says his doctors told him he had two months to live and scheduled him to start treatment—in three months. He was later given a second diagnosis by the City of Hope in L.A.—hemangioendothelioma (cancer of blood vessels in the lungs) and was told he would die in a few years.
“They said there was nothing they could do, no medicine they could give me,” he says. “I was trapped in a box of depression. I started reaching out to people in the [420] movement—Eddy Lepp, Jack Herer. Somehow, Cannabis Sanctuary got a hold of one of my emails—basically, a cry for help—and that’s how I met Rev. Paul and [registered nurse and anti-drug-war activist] Bob Guenther. That meeting changed my life.”
It would be difficult to imagine someone more inclined to be sympathetic of Donovan’s plight than Smalley, who’s permanently disabled from a spinal-cord injury from a suicide attempt in the ’80s.
“I went to school to make rich people richer—that didn’t do it for me,” says Smalley, who has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in counseling. “A basic tenet of the ministry is to lift up the poor and the downtrodden. We all deserve a seat at the table.”
Jerry, who knew Donovan prior to joining the group, explains how critical it was for the troubled war vet to have affordable access to cannabis.
“If you’d met Donny before he became involved, you couldn’t have this kind of conversation with him,” Jerry says. “He was sick. He had anger issues. He was easily overwhelmed. Donny was told in his recommendation to smoke a half-ounce a day—that’s insane. How can you afford that much?”
The free medicine sanctuary workers provided Donovan was both a lifeline and a revelation.
“I couldn’t believe that there were people out there who would do that,” he says. “The day the sanctuary donated to me, I said, ‘I’m going to be a part of this.’”
Being a field worker for the sanctuary means being constantly on call and maintaining a strong presence in the cannabis community. Most of the field workers’ first contacts with needy patients happen on a one-on-one basis—the workers will meet a patient at a meeting or event, learn his or her story and offer to help. They hand out their business cards to everyone they meet. Members are encouraged to grow medicine themselves so long as they stay within state guidelines. Field workers store no cannabis in their homes.
Donovan and his wife, who takes medicinal cannabis for her muscular dystrophy, say the work of helping others has helped pull him out of his depression and given them something they had long lived without—hope.
“I get a real rush out of this work,” Donovan says, “a feeling of excitement and joy in helping people.”
He credits those feelings and his daily cannabis regimen for the fact his cancer hasn’t grown in more than a year.
“I was just checked out by my oncologist,” he says, “and my blood work was fine.”
To contact the Cannabis Sanctuary, email info@cannabissanctuary.org.
