Pubdate: Tue, 19 Aug 2014
Source: Regina Leader-Post (CN SN)
Copyright: 2014 The Leader-Post Ltd.
Contact: http://www.leaderpost.com/opinion/letters/letters-to-the-editor.html
Website: http://www.leaderpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/361
Author: Sharon Kirkey
Page: A4

POLITICALLY CHARGED ISSUE DOMINATES MEDICAL CONFERENCE

The nation's doctors are under no obligation to prescribe marijuana 
to patients seeking it for pain relief or other medical purposes, 
Canada's federal health minister says.

Marijuana isn't an approved drug, Health Canada has not endorsed its 
use and it has not been proven safe or effective, Rona Ambrose said 
Monday at the opening day of the annual meeting of the Canadian 
Medical Association.

"The majority of the physician community do not want to prescribe it, 
they don't want to be put in a situation where they're pressured to 
prescribe it and I encourage them to not prescribe it if they're not 
comfortable with it," Ambrose told reporters.

The emotionally charged issue dominated the doctors' meeting Monday. 
Their leaders say MDs resent being made the sole route by which 
Canadians can obtain legal access to marijuana and that doctors feel 
as if they're being asked to authorize an unapproved drug with blindfolds on.

Most people who self-medicate with pot prefer to smoke it. "The last 
time I checked, smoking causes cancer and lung disease and I don't 
think there's anything magical about marijuana that gets rid of 
that," said outgoing CMA president and emergency physician Dr. Louis 
Hugo Francescutti.

"If we could deliver it through a cookie or a milkshake or a pill or 
a liquid and we know that it works, we would welcome it with open 
arms," he said. But, "we just don't feel comfortable with it."

Francescutti said the amounts of marijuana licensed growers are now 
producing "would far exceed any medicinal requirement for this 
country" and that reps or "detailers" are visiting doctors and 
"making all sorts of promises around marijuana."

Some patients seeking pot are doctor-shopping, he said, and if they 
can't get authorization they end up in emergency departments "tying 
up our already busy emergency departments." He said female physicians 
working in rural Canada have told him they've felt threatened and 
intimidated into signing prescriptions.

"I've never received as much hate mail as I do on a daily basis 
around marijuana," Francescutti said.

But provincial regulatory colleges and their medical malpractice 
insurer are telling doctors to tread carefully, he said.

The resistance is driving desperate patients to seek out doctors 
willing to authorize a prescription, for a price. Delegates heard 
that some doctors are charging $200 to sign the forms Health Canada 
requires to let patients consume marijuana legally.

Montreal physician Dr. Mark Ware, a world leader in cannabis 
research, said medical marijuana "is an exploding issue" that's not 
going away and that doctors should be educating themselves in the 
"fundamental abc's" about cannabinoids.

But the stigma is hard to shake, said Ware, an associate professor of 
family medicine and anesthesia at Montreal's McGill University. 
Cannabis is still seen as an illegal substance, he said, "a drug of 
abuse instead of a drug of potential use."

He said licensed marijuana producers have an obligation to put some 
of the money they're making back into clinical trials. "If they don't 
do that then they run the risk of profiteering from sick patients. I 
think they should do everything they can to avoid that perspective."

His patient, 31-year-old Mark Nixon, who was left a paraplegic after 
a car crash seven years ago on a country road near Hudson, Que., told 
the delegates at the conference that marijuana has dramatically 
improved his sleep at night and helps ease stomach and nerve pain. 
"It does help us, the people who need it, the people who use it correctly.

"I don't want to be considered a pot-head. That's not what I'm in it 
for. I'm trying to live a better life, a more comfortable life."

Ambrose said that since the new medical marijuana approval regime was 
implemented and oversight tightened over who is approving marijuana 
for medical reasons - and how much - the average amount of pot 
authorized by a doctor has fallen from 17 grams a day to four grams a day.

She also defended a controversial, taxpayer-funded anti-pot campaign 
that has become a politically charged issue on Canada's marijuana policy.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom