‘And’ is distributive.

We also conclude that the plain language of § 8 clearly indicates that the affirmative defense available under that section is intended to apply only to a prosecution arising out of activities directly related to a defendant's status as a patient or, if applicable, a defendant's status as a patient's primary caregiver. As earlier stated, § 8(a) provides that "a patient and a patient's primary caregiver, if any, may assert the medical purpose for using marihuana as a defense to any prosecution involving marihuana...." (Emphasis added.) We believe that the use of the word "and" in this context is conjunctive, joining "patient" and "a patient's primary caregiver" as two limited, and connected, *383 categories of individuals who may raise a § 8 defense. See Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed) (defining "conjunctive/disjunctive canon" as "[t]he doctrine that in a legal instrument, and joins a conjunctive list to combine items, while or joins a disjunctive list to create alternatives."). "The" is a definite article "with a specific or particularizing effect...." See Robinson v. City of Lansing, 486 Mich. 1, 14, 782 N.W.2d 171 (2010) (quotation marks and citation omitted). Therefore, from this language, it is clear that only a patient himself or herself and that patient's primary caregiver may assert as an affirmative defense a specific patient's "medical purpose for using marihuana." This understanding is confirmed by the fact that the subsequent elements of § 8(a) consistently refer to "the patient" and "the patient's primary caregiver." (Emphasis added.) Likewise, the Michigan Supreme Court implicitly recognized that a § 8 defense is available only for conduct occurring in the context of an established patient-caregiver relationship when it stated, "A primary caregiver has the burden of establishing the elements of § 8(a)(1) for each patient to whom the primary caregiver is alleged to have unlawfully provided marijuana." Hartwick, 498 Mich. at 232, 870 N.W.2d 37 ; see also § 8(a)(3) (" The patient and the patient's primary caregiver, if any, were engaged in the acquisition, possession, cultivation, manufacture, use, delivery, transfer, or transportation of marihuana or paraphernalia relating to the use of marihuana to treat or alleviate the patient's serious or debilitating medical condition or symptoms of the patient's serious or debilitating medical condition.") (italic and bold emphasis added). Therefore, we conclude that the language employed in § 8 presupposes a relationship between the primary caregiver and the patient, so that the marijuana in the primary caregiver's possession is cultivated or held by *384 that caregiver, or transferred by the caregiver to the patient, in furtherance of the medical use of the marijuana by that particular caregiver's patient.