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.
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe