Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jul 2014
Source: Edmonton Journal (CN AB)
Copyright: 2014 The Edmonton Journal
Website: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/134
Author: Marie-Danielle Smith
Page: A14

MEDICAL POT PRODUCERS TRYING HARD TO WOO MDS

"If marijuana is so magical, then how come the trials aren't out
there?" Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti

OTTAWA - Representatives for licensed medical marijuana companies are
being sent to doctors' offices as part of a push to get hesitant
physicians to prescribe the drug more often.

It's a development that has dismayed Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti, the
president of the Canadian Medical Association, who says that a largely
unproven treatment is now being thrust upon doctors, putting them into
potential confrontations with patients looking to score drugs and
vendors looking to peddle them.

"I'm actually quite frightened," he said.

Francescutti said some of Canada's 13 licensed marijuana producers are
operating in the same way pharmaceutical companies do. "They've got
product they have to move. So they've hired the best advertising
firms," he said. "Now, they've got very professional, well-dressed men
and women knocking on doctors' offices."

That's a problem for Francescutti, at least in part, because he
doesn't think medical marijuana has been put through stringent enough
testing.

"There would have to be a clinical trial for its effect on depression,
for its effect on joint pain. You'd have to have probably a thousand
trials that would have to be repeated," he said. "If marijuana is so
magical, then how come the trials aren't out there?"

Fracescutti acknowledged that one of the reasons those trials may not
have been done previously could have been a lack of funding: "That
could be part of it."

Tweed, Canada's first publicly traded medical marijuana producer, has
hired three "academic detailers" to visit doctors' offices.

Mark Zekulin, executive vice-president of the Smiths Falls, Ont.-based
company, said they are "out there hitting the pavement, introducing
who we are."

He said doctors get a lot of visits from pharmaceutical companies, but
"we're a little different." He said most doctors are receptive and
interested in learning more.

Tweed's director of business and medical development, Chris Murray,
said there is a lot of apprehension from doctors in terms of the "hard
sell from pharma reps."

"We are not out there putting a hard sell on medical marijuana," said
Zekulin. "There is information out there, and we're not making it up.
It's to make doctors aware of that information. How they want to
integrate it into their practice is up to them."

However, Dr. Alykhan Abdulla, president of the Academy of Medicine
Ottawa, said he believes more than 90 per cent of physicians would be
hesitant to prescribe medical marijuana.

"The average family doctor has never learned how to prescribe medical
marijuana. It's not taught in medical school," said Abdulla, who said
he has prescribed the herb. He said companies are not only sending
representatives to lobby doctors but also making calls, writing emails
and sending faxes.
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