Pubdate: Tue, 02 Aug 2016
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Page: A10
Copyright: 2016 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168

MEDICINAL POT? OR SNAKE OIL

We don't let you cook up medicines in your kitchen and dispense them 
on your front lawn, or brew moonshine in your garage and sell it from 
a storefront. There are all kinds of good reasons why governments 
can't allow people to do as they please when it comes to homemade 
pharmaceuticals and intoxicants - and there is no reason why 
marijuana should now be the exception to a regulatory environment 
designed to protect our society and keep it healthy.

And yet, as a Globe and Mail investigation into the largely 
unregulated and illegal business of marijuana retailing has shown, 
government inaction has fostered a Wild West mentality where the 
prospect of quick profits can encourage risky practices and false advertising.

Cannabis dispensaries have thrived in the vacuum created when the 
federal government announced that marijuana would soon be legalized. 
A medical-marijuana industry previously subject to stringent controls 
in production and access - and answerable to Health Canada - was 
transformed almost overnight into an unregulated and unmonitored 
consumer-products business that proudly goes its own way.

Among The Globe's findings were that three out of nine samples of pot 
purchased in Toronto dispensaries didn't meet Health Canada's safety 
standards for licensed medical marijuana. They contained excessive 
and potentially dangerous levels of bacteria; one sample had 
worrisome levels of mould and yeast.

Other tests showed that so-called "edibles" - cookies, lollipops and 
other snacks that purport to contain the active medical ingredients 
in marijuana - don't always contain as much of the ingredient as 
billed. Four out of five samples tested fell far short of their claims.

That kind of misleading labelling would bring the wrath of Health 
Canada down on any other business. But pot dispensaries are selling 
whatever they want and making any claims they choose about the 
quality, safety and provenance of their product. This clearly must 
stop. Medical marijuana should be available to those who need it. But 
right now too much of the product on sale in Canada is hard to 
distinguish from the snake oils of yesteryear.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom