Pubdate: Sat, 19 Oct 2002
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2002, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Jane Gadd, Courts Reporter
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada)

DON'T THROW OUT FEDERAL POT LAWS, LAWYER WARNS

Regulations Ensure MDs, Not Patients, Govern Medical Use Of Cannabis, Court 
Told

TORONTO -- Throwing out Ottawa's regulations on medical use of marijuana 
would lead to a tidal wave of demand to treat "everything from warts to 
hemorrhoids," a Justice Department lawyer warned in Ontario Superior Court 
yesterday.

Fighting a court bid by patients who want easier access to a drug they say 
helps them, lawyer Harvey Frankel said the regulations ensure that doctors, 
not patients, decide who gets an exemption from federal laws banning 
marijuana possession.

"If it's to be left solely to the discretion of people who stand up and 
say, 'I use marijuana for medical purposes,' that's anyone and everyone," 
Mr. Frankel said. "There's going to be something wrong with everybody. 
[For] any ailment known to mankind, someone's claimed marijuana is good for 
it."

The government is opposing a court application by several sick Canadians 
who want access to legally grown marijuana without going through the 
bureaucratic process involved.

The HIV, cancer, hepatitis and multiple sclerosis patients, along with the 
Toronto Compassion Centre, which supplies illicit marijuana to 1,200 
people, say Ottawa's medical marijuana access regulations are "a 
constitutionally deficient regime that operate as an illusory exemption."

They have told the court that doctors are reluctant to write marijuana 
prescriptions and that patients object to providing their names, addresses 
and photographs to the government to obtain exemption cards.

They want Mr. Justice Sidney Lederman to order Ottawa to resurrect a 
shelved plan to make marijuana, grown under government auspices in a mine 
shaft in Flin Flon, Man., available to medical users.

Mr. Frankel told the judge that it is not the courts' place to order 
governments to do anything; they can only tell them what not to do.

Besides, the amount of marijuana in the mine would meet the demand for less 
than one week, he said.

Quoting figures provided by Brent Zettl, president of Prairie Plant 
Systems, he said 200 kilograms of marijuana has been harvested in Flin Flon.

The Compassion Club serves 1,200 people in Toronto, and the average medical 
user smokes five grams a day, Mr. Frankel said. Canada's population is 10 
times that of Toronto, but even if the national demand is only five times 
that of Toronto the result would be 6,000 people smoking five grams a day, 
30 kilograms a day in total.

Since Parliament introduced the regulations in July, 2001, 565 people have 
applied for medical exemptions to the laws against marijuana possession and 
343 exemptions have been granted, the lawyer said.

The remaining 222 have not been completed because of missing information or 
photographs, not because of the absence of doctors' signatures, Mr. Frankel 
said.

The regulations were the government's response to an Ontario Court of 
Appeal ruling in 2000 that found the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act 
discriminated against sick people who benefit from marijuana use.
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