Pubdate: Thu, 01 Aug 2013
Source: NOW Magazine (CN ON)
Copyright: 2013 NOW Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.nowtoronto.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/282
Author: Barbara Shaw

DR. ROBERT KAMERMANS'S MEDPOT CRUSADE

How One Physician's Budding Practice Became the Target of an Opp-RCMP 
Drug Sting

Coe Hill, Ontario - Ninety minutes north of Peterborough, is a 
hamlet. It's not big enough to be a village. Its one main street 
houses a small grocery store, gas station, post office, restaurant 
and Dr. Robert Kamermans's medical clinic, which is noteworthy for 
the fact that for a brief time it was the centre of the medical 
marijuana movement in Canada. Before the cops showed up, that is.

When the clinic started getting busy, the locals knew what was going 
on; everyone chatted with the patients in the cafe. They shared 
tables and stories. No one had a problem with the fact that the good 
doctor was prescribing marijuana.

The township council, in fact, happily passed a motion to send a 
letter of support for the doctor to the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons of Ontario.

Kamermans was helping sick people who would otherwise not have access 
to the federal government's medpot program, for which you need a 
prescription to get the medicine. He was helping people no one else 
wanted to help, and that's just how things were in Coe Hill.

On clinic days, the traffic would pick up and it would feel like a 
busy Friday night during cottage season. Weary travellers in 
wheelchairs, some with walking sticks, would be lined up around 
Kamermans's office. They came from all over Ontario. Occasionally 
they would stroll through town or down to the public beach to relax 
before seeing the doctor and his wife, Mary, a registered nurse.

Many looking for help were without cars, and since no buses or trains 
run through Coe Hill, Kamermans started operating mobile medical 
clinics. He would see groups of patients in Toronto, Hamilton and 
other larger urban centres over the course of a few days. His travels 
took him as far as New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Montreal.

"It was hard work, but it made sense to go to where the patients 
were," Kamermans says.

Thanks to the connectedness of the Canadian medical marijuana 
community - and some great online reviews from patients - the 
doctor's name and his belief in supporting access to the medication 
went viral. More staff had to be hired to keep up with the number of 
calls. Eventually his office employed eight people.

By the end of 2011, the doctor had written 4,000 prescriptions for 
patients. Patients who visited Coe Hill paid $100 for the paperwork 
needed to support access to medical marijuana. Kamermans billed OHIP 
his regular fee for a standard patient visit on top of that. He 
charged $250 at mobile clinics to cover his travel costs, he says.

Kamermans says the patients who came to him couldn't afford to buy 
pot on the street or from other sources. Many said they'd been turned 
down by their own family physicians, who still viewed marijuana as 
illegal. "This wasn't about the money. It was about responding to the 
patients' needs," says Kamermans.

The cops, however, didn't see it that way. Kamermans became the 
target of a massive police sting operation.

The Organized Crime Enforcement Bureau (OCEB), with the help of the 
Ontario Provincial Police's Anti-Rackets Branch, Health Fraud 
Investigation Unit and the RCMP, launched Project Thorne in November of 2011.

The focus was on fraud and forged medical forms in relation to Health 
Canada's medicinal marijuana program. Law enforcement claimed that 
criminals were using Health Canada permits to grow their own for the 
black market.

After two months of surveillance, some 20 officers from the OPP and 
RCMP showed up at Coe Hill on January 26, 2012, when the doctor was 
getting ready for a busy clinic day.

The search warrant they produced suggested there were illegal drugs 
on the premises and that Kamermans had been involved in trafficking. 
The doctor was handcuffed. The OPP said it was for their protection. 
He was brought outside, photographed in restraints and called a drug 
dealer. His patients' charts were removed. Kamermans was held in a 
cell and spent hours being questioned before he was released without charges.

Those would not be laid until six months later, while Kamermans was 
working in the emergency room of a tiny rural hospital in Sturgeon 
Falls, Ontario. Taking the doctor away mid-shift left an entire 
community without a functioning ER.

Kamermans was charged with three counts of fraud, five counts of 
uttering forged documents, possession of property obtained by crime, 
and laundering the proceeds of the crime. His wife faces the same 
charges but with one less count for uttering forged documents.

Meanwhile, the College of Physicians and Surgeons had launched its 
own investigation after a physician complained in the fall of 2011 
that Kamermans had prescribed her patient pot. In May of this year, 
the College ruled that Kamermans could not sign for cannabis. He had 
not signed since January of 2012 because of the police investigation.

The police are remaining tight-lipped about the investigation as the 
case wends its way through court. A preliminary hearing is set to 
begin in October. But in an interview after Kamermans's arrest, the 
then-head of the Bancroft OPP detachment, Staff Sergeant Dan Rajsic, 
was clear. "If you deal drugs you have to expect to deal with the 
police," he said.

"The practice was transparent," Kamermans says.

Ryan, who doesn't want his last name used, is a patient of Kamermans. 
He runs his own business and is raising a family. He suffers from 
multiple sclerosis.

When he heard that medical marijuana could help, he went to his 
family doctor. He was turned down.

"He wouldn't help," Ryan says. "And then I found the Kamermans, and 
they were compassionate and caring, listened to all of my concerns 
and approved me. I started feeling better. I have two young kids. Now 
I have an appetite and can sleep, and the horrible pain is under control.

"I am not depressed like I was," Ryan said. "This is a great doctor. 
He's sitting there all alone having to deal with this crap. He's the 
one who gets the negative publicity and has to risk everything. This 
is allowed by Health Canada, but the police are making this hard for 
him and hard for us."

Kamermans says he still doesn't understand the charges. He's also had 
a tough time working with his patients since all their charts were 
seized. He now refers his patients to other doctors, some of whom 
charge hundreds more to sign medpot forms. The Health Canada program 
has also been going through significant changes, adding more barriers 
for those most in need.

At the same time, more and more physicians are recognizing the 
benefits of marijuana and signing the forms. At the end of January 
2012, when Kamermans stopped prescribing, there were 13,781 Canadians 
authorized to possess dried marijuana. By the end of December 2012, 
that number had grown to 28,115.

"This is both disappointing and ridiculous," Kamermans says of his 
ordeal. "The people who came to us did not want to go to the black 
market. This program was supposed to make the black market smaller, 
and that's a good thing, right?" 
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom