Pubdate: Wed, 16 Mar 2016
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2016 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v16/n148/a10.html
Author: Vincent Maida
Page: A16

POT-VAPING RULES STILL NEED TWEAKING

Re Finally getting it right, Editorial March 11

The Ontario government has made a serious error in proposing new 
rules that would prohibit patients from using vapourized medical 
marijuana in a wide range of indoor and outdoor spaces. The proposed 
regulations would treat medical marijuana vapour as equivalent to 
tobacco smoke. This is both unfair to patients and scientifically incorrect.

Increasingly, patients with advanced illnesses such as cancer, 
HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis are experiencing significant relief 
of otherwise intolerable and intractable suffering through the use of 
medical marijuana. Such patients would otherwise continue to suffer 
unjustly despite the use of high-dose opioids that carry much higher 
overall costs and risks to both patients and society.

Vapourized medical marijuana is not burned and thus does not create 
smoke. Vapourizer devices, one of which is approved by Health Canada 
as a Class 2 medical device, apply low-level heat to the herbal 
marijuana material to release the active pharmaceutical ingredients - 
the cannabinoids.

When using vapourizer devices, patients exhale only a small amount of 
vapour that does not contain the harmful particulate products of 
combustion found in tobacco smoke. Moreover, even if the vapour is 
released in proximity to bystanders, the minute amounts of 
cannabinoids (THC and CBD) are in the range of parts per million and 
thus unlikely to cause untoward "second-hand" effects to adults.

It is not acceptable for government to interfere with patients' use 
of the medicine they are prescribed by their physician for these 
purposes, particularly when the mode of delivery is through a 
vapourization device. For the benefit of patients suffering from 
severe pain and polysymptom distress, the Ontario government should 
go back to the drawing board and develop a more informed set of 
regulations that take science and patients' interests into account.

Dr. Vincent Maida, palliative medicine consultant, Toronto
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom