Event Raises Nearly $14,000 for Allard Case

A fundraiser event this past weekend celebrated the recent victory for patients in the Allard decision and brought together $13,854 in funds from the medicinal cannabis community.

Organized by Jenn Bennett, the Abbotsford One Love For Patients event saw an outpouring of support and donation from across the country creating, what Bennett called, a very special time for those in attendance.

“It really joined all of Canada,” said Bennett. “There were prizes from Ontario there, people traveled from the island and Kamloops, people traveled to come to this, so it was really good.”

Bennett had originally planned the event as strictly a fundraiser as the Allard appeal neared its one-year anniversary, but it quickly become a celebration after Justice Michael Phelan announced his verdict.

“It felt good, because there felt like there was more of a purpose for the party and the patients really needed to hear that,” Bennett said. “It was just a festive event, everyone was really happy, John Conroy gave a half-an-hour speech.”

Bennett said it was important for patients to hear directly from Conroy what was happening in the fight for access to medical cannabis.

“Because you hear all this stuff on line, I think having them hear that speech that night it was good,” she said. “It’s not just from activists, it came right from John’s mouth.”

Now that Allard has been decided, Bennett said the community will now turn its eyes to Apr. 22, when Conroy will return to court to try and allow medical patients the right to change the address of their permit and grant access to those MMAR patients left out in the previous case.

“They’ve already suffered enough harm over this last year over ht last year, we’ve had deaths because people haven’t been able to grow their medicine,” Bennett said. “It’s about time that everybody was let in on this.”

Bennett wanted to give special thanks to all of the generous sponsors who made the event possible, a complete list of which can be found on the fundraiser Facebook event page.