Pubdate: Sat, 19 Nov 2011
Source: StarPhoenix, The (CN SN)
Copyright: 2011 The StarPhoenix
Contact: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/400
Author: Sharon Kirkey
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada)

PLEAS FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA UNHEARD, USERS SAY

When the 55-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis asked her doctor 
to sign her Health Canada declaration for medical marijuana, the 
neurologist put her hands over her ears. "La, la, la, la," she sang, 
"I can't hear you."

As a result, the woman is left to hide her illegal use of pot to 
control her pain, which she says on most days ranks nine on a scale 
of 10. If she's out shopping and a major pain attack hits, she says 
she'll drive her wheelchair to the alley behind the mall, and smoke 
behind a trash bin.

A man in his 60s with Lyme disease struggles just to breathe and 
move. Before he started using marijuana, he sometimes slept 20 hours 
a day. He says marijuana works "like a miracle." It allows him to 
function. But his doctor refuses to sign his declaration, forcing him 
to buy it off the black market. He says he lives daily with the fear 
of being caught.

These people were among nearly two dozen patient witnesses whose 
evidence was used in an Ontario Superior Court case this year in 
which Canada's medicinal marijuana access program was ruled 
constitutionally invalid - a ruling Ottawa is appealing.

Justice Donald Taliano said the regulations are so profoundly flawed 
that legal access to marijuana is "practically unattainable for those 
who desperately need it." Twenty three patients from Vancouver to 
Charlottetown, who served as witnesses in court, were collectively 
denied by 113 doctors.

Every one of them suffers from serious, debilitating and painful 
conditions. All have been prescribed opioids by their doctors, but 
the drugs either don't work or cause intolerable side effects.

All had asked for help getting a licence to use marijuana. Most of 
the doctors refused.

Their affidavits have been sealed to protect their personal 
information. But in a copy of the ruling, in which the patient 
witnesses are identified by initials only, Taliano describes people 
with bodies ravaged by MS, arthritis, trauma, cancer, Crohn's, 
degenerative-disc disease and other conditions so painful some people 
have difficulty putting one foot in front of the other, such as a 
55-year-old woman who suffered injuries to her spine when she was 
struck by a drunk driver, to a man from Prince George, B.C., who 
suffers debilitating back and shoulder pain and has to travel 950 
kilometres to a compassion club in Vancouver to get marijuana.

Others include a woman from Lethbridge, who suffers from inflammatory 
arthritis and chronic vertigo attacks that can last three days.

Unlike the 29 drugs she's been prescribed by doctors, marijuana helps 
lessen the attacks without the "zombie"-like side effects of 
prescription drugs. Yet 26 doctors have refused her request for 
medicinal marijuana.

Nearly 50 doctors have denied Dave Douglas.

The Vancouver man accidentally drank bleach when he was four years 
old, severely damaging his stomach. He uses marijuana to ease the 
intense nausea and cramping that's impossible to get under control if 
it starts up, as well as epilepsy. He doesn't smoke marijuana. He 
uses a vaporizing device, or he eats it or drinks it in tea.

In an interview, he said he's heard "every excuse in the book" for 
doctors refusing to sign his declaration. He said he's nearly $10,000 
in debt from buying drugs on the street. His credit cards are maxed 
out; his health is getting worse. "And I still don't have access to 
the medication," he says.

"I trusted doctors to have my health in mind over anything else. They 
seem to be more worried about the political and legal ramifications 
of me having cannabis than actually feeling better."

In Montreal's West Island, a 70-year-old woman reaches for her pipe 
when the pain becomes unbearable - when it feels as though her bones 
are crumbling and splintering with every step or as if her back might 
split into two. She takes two to three puffs at a time. The drug 
relaxes her muscles and the brutal spasms of pain from her 
osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia.

"The pain is all over my body, completely, from my neck down to my 
toes," she says.

Her entire body hurts. She's been using cannabis, legally, for six 
years - one ounce a month - but she said she still fears one day 
losing access to the only thing that helps.

"If I couldn't take the cannabis, it would be like, I don't want to 
live," she says. "It would be too much."

But the Canadian Medical Association says that would put unfair 
pressure on doctors, making them gatekeepers to a largely untested 
and unregulated substance they know little to nothing about.

The association says the drug hasn't gone through the normal 
regulatory review process, and that licensing bodies have told 
doctors anyone choosing to sign a medical declaration under the 
current regulations should proceed with caution.

Keith Fagin has been consuming cannabis for 40 years for pain. The 
Calgary man, who is active in the medicinal marijuana movement, has 
helped people get a Health Canada exemption, but he refuses to apply 
for one himself, "because it is unconstitutional."

Fagin has suffered from constant, unrelenting pain in his left hip 
since he was hit by a car when he was seven years old. Then, in 1991, 
he was struck by a forklift in an industrial accident. The impact 
smashed his left arm and aggravated his hip. He lives with a constant 
painful burning, tingling sensation and numbness in the arm. He uses 
marijuana for his pain, tumble-drying buds to knock the trichomes 
off. Trichomes contain tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active 
ingredient in cannabis.

Fagin puts it in capsules that he swallows. He sometimes uses a 
vaporizer. It doesn't kill the pain, but it reduces it. He's still up 
and down throughout the night, because of the pain, he says.

Fagin says even people with legal access to medicinal marijuana hide 
their use because of the stigma. "If you try to consume your cannabis 
in public, you're frowned upon. You're a dirty old hippie. All that 
reefer-madness nonsense comes into play."

In his judgment, Taliano said doctors are being asked to endorse a 
largely untested and unapproved drug, without the safeguards that 
would be provided in a clinical trial, for example. He said no steps 
were taken by the government to get doctors to buy into the program 
before the regulations were implemented.

But it is the "ill-conceived legislation itself" not doctors, he 
said, that has led to an oppressive situation, where marijuana is 
denied to those who need it "and are otherwise entitled to have it."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom