Pubdate: Mon, 28 Jul 2014
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network
Contact:  http://www.calgaryherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Karin Klassen
Page: A10

LEGALIZING POT IS A SOCIAL ISSUE, NOT A MEDICAL ONE

Physicians don't want to prescribe pot; surveys indicate this
overwhelmingly. The Canadian Medical Association unequivocally doesn't
want them to do it either, and for years, they've issued policy
statements, briefs and resolutions to their members, to the public, to
the courts, and to government saying so.

The insurer of physicians, the Canadian Medical Protective
Association, advises doctors not to do it, citing liability concerns.

Last week, the president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr.
Louis Hugo Francescutti, raised alarms when he said that between pot
manufacturers lobbying physicians, and patients pushing for
prescriptions, doctors have been put in an untenable position. One
2012 CMA survey of doctors showed that 70 per cent had been asked for
a pot prescription, with doctors estimating that 64 per cent of these
requests were for non-medical use. Intimidating indeed.

Why are these gatekeepers of our health such buzz-kills? If the courts
have said it's OK, who are doctors to say it's not?

The courts have been conned, says Francescutti, and regardless of some
studies indicating that pot is all that and a bag of chips, the
evidence supporting the use of marijuana for medical purposes does not
reach the standard of scientific research that all other medicines
must do. This includes information on dose, effects on interactions
with other medications, and effects of long-term use. FDA-approved
medications have to go through clinical, double-blind studies with big
sample sizes before they get the physician seal of approval: Pot
should too, doctors say.

Health Canada is usually the arbiter of what constitutes an acceptable
drug, but in the case of pot, it has been excused from its duty. Pot
is exempt from this scrutiny, abandoning doctors to deal with the
fallout. Most doctors have said that if they're going to do no harm,
there is some need-to-know material that needs to be brought up to
snuff, preferably with some specialized training attached. That seems
reasonable.

The CMA outlines what it does know. Pot slows reaction times and
impairs motor co-ordination, and is responsible for an increase in
motor vehicle deaths. All of the bad cancer causing issues associated
with smoking cigarettes goes for smoking pot too, only worse, because
there's generally no filter. Pot can cause depression, anxiety and
psychosis, especially in young people whose brains haven't fully
formed (and by young, this means under 25), and especially in families
where there is a history of mental illness.

Chicken-and-egg studies continue on the relationship between pot
smoking and schizophrenia: not proven, but some complex relationship
seems to exist, says the Harvard Health Blog.

And yet instead of listening to medical experts on medical issues, the
court says standing in the way of providing relief to people who have
an illness for which they feel better when they've partaken of some
Mary Jane is unconstitutional, and so it must be allowed. Without any
apparent thought to how this legal-for-some, but-not-for-others
discrepancy might actually work in practice, the ripple effects of
this decision have been irresponsibly flicked out onto not only
physicians, but police departments, health facilities, and frankly,
ultimately, every single one of us.

Alberta physicians have responded to this issue by allowing doctors to
cite moral or religious grounds in deciding not to prescribe, and
while this does the trick, it puts medical marijuana on the same
ground as not prescribing, for example, birth control. This is a
shame, because the pot issue is one of science, not of belief, and
it's just not the same thing.

The majority of Canadians want pot to be legalized. There's also
little doubt that marijuana makes people with some illnesses feel
better. It makes people without illnesses feel better too. But the
bottom line is that you can't make something medical by saying it is.

The discussion about legalizing marijuana is at this point a social
one, and ought to be dealt with in that way, head on. Slipping pot use
into the medical arena, which does not yet support it, is misleading,
cowardly, irresponsible and possibly even dangerous.

When pot is as legal as alcohol, as it likely will be eventually, a
lot of people will make a lot of money. All doctors are saying, is
that until there are some scientific returns, they don't want a piece
of that action. It's really quite galling that the courts can foist
this on them anyway; doctors should be supported in their principles
in rejecting it.
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MAP posted-by: Matt