OTTAWA — At the age of 11, Emma Boniface watched her mother lose herself in the grasp of an opioid addiction.
Diagnosed with a debilitating spinal condition in 2013, Genevieve Gendron was prescribed fentanyl and oxycodone to deal with the chronic pain, and soon began to experience the side effects of opioid use. Before long, she’d lost more than half her teeth, her mobility — and her job.
In 2015, her daughter recalls, Gendron began using medical marijuana — and everything changed.
“She was much happier,” said Boniface, who at the tender age of 14 is scheduled to take the stage Friday at Ottawa’s annual 4-20 rally on Parliament Hill to speak about the power of pot.
“She was awake more often, she was talking with us, she was able to walk. She was able to do stuff, a lot more than before. We had our mom back.”
Marijuana enthusiasts have long been circling April 20 on their calendars as the annual day to celebrate cannabis and the culture surrounding it. In the national capital, they gather by the thousands in the shadow of the Centre Block, defying the authorities amid thick billows of smoke.
But it’s 2018, and things are a little different: the federal government’s Cannabis Act, a central component of the Liberal party’s successful election campaign three years ago, is working its way through Parliament and is expected to make the recreational use of marijuana legal later this summer.
Even so, 4-20 festivities this year will be as much an act of protest as a celebration, organizers say.
The public debate about legal pot that began in 2015 has used young people as a “political football” in order to focus on the potential perils of marijuana, rather than its virtues, co-organizer Shawn MacAleese suggested during a news conference earlier this week.
Making it harder for young people to access and use marijuana has been a central theme of the federal government’s plan. Instead of the black market, legal cannabis will be available on a strictly regulated basis, with the rules being established by the provinces and territories — from how it is produced to how it is advertised and sold to the minimum age for purpose.
That’s why the 14-year-old Boniface was chosen as keynote speaker — the youngest ever for a 4-20 event in Ottawa, MacAleese said. The idea was intended to “put a focal point on the younger generation.”