Pubdate: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU) Copyright: 2001 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc. Contact: http://www.montrealgazette.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/grant.htm (Krieger, Grant) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada) DRUG APPROVAL IS GOING TO POT Last fall, Grant Krieger of Calgary went to court to fight a charge of cultivating marijuana. He told the judge that pot alleviated his symptoms of multiple sclerosis. Judge Darlene Acton was sympathetic, and then some. She threw out the charge, said it violated Krieger's security rights under the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms and gave Parliament 12 months to amend drug legislation so that sick people could get medicinal cannabis. It's because of the Acton judgment and others like it since 1997 that Canada this week has become the first country in the world to allow people to possess marijuana for medicinal purposes. The new regulations, which took effect Monday, allow sick and dying people to take marijuana for pain or symptom relief, provided they can get one doctor (in some cases, two are required) to prescribe it after attesting that other remedies have been ineffective. The government is to begin supplying pot to those who qualify this fall, when the first crop is harvested at the new marijuana plantation in Flin Flon, Man., which it chose as its official supplier. Doctors' organizations don't like the new regulations, and for good reason. The alleged medicinal benefits of marijuana have never been subjected to analysis in clinical trial. The way the drug process works in Canada, testing precedes approval, not the other way around. When you have courts forcing legislators to approve drugs that haven't been tested yet, something's wrong. "We're being asked to be gatekeepers for a product that hasn't gone through any rigorous testing," says Peter Barrett, president of the Canadian Medical Association. If marijuana, heretofore a recreational drug, is to be rebranded as a medicinal herb, then assertions of its therapeutic value have to substantiated by clinical trial first. Until then, the Quebec College of Physicians and Surgeons is quite properly threatening fines and temporary license suspensions for any Quebec doctor who prescribes marijuana before a recognized mainstream research group examines its medical benefits, side-effects and, above all, its interaction with other drugs. Just such a major study on the effectiveness of marijuana as a pain-relief medication is to begin in January at the Montreal General Hospital. Anecdotal evidence suggests marijuana might well have medicinal value. If clinical trials corroborate these claims, fine. If they don't, then the flurry of recent pot-as-medicine defences in Canadian courts starts to look more like rearguard lobbying for eventual decriminalization. There's considerable sympathy in Canada for the idea of decriminalization of possession, including at this newspaper, but that's a parallel issue. Police rarely bust people any more for possession, yet the prohibition of possession is still there on the statute books. The contradiction reflects the fact that Canadians aren't really sure what to think about marijuana any more. You know your country is confused when your central government approves the drug for use without bothering to study it properly first. - --- MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe