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Pubdate: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON) Copyright: 2008 The Ottawa Citizen Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada) WEEDING OUT BAD POLICY Pretending that marijuana possesses magic evil qualities that make it more dangerous than a thousand other substances our laws permit doctors to prescribe, from Ritalin to morphine, hurts physicians and their patients. Nobody seems keen to help the doctors, but Deputy Judge Barry Strayer of the Federal Court has struck a blow on behalf of the patients. Judge Strayer is 75 and semi-retired after spending a decade as chief justice of the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada; he's no new-age softie. But last week he killed a Health Canada rule that practically gave the federal government a monopoly on legal marijuana cultivation for people whose doctors say they can use the weed for a range of illnesses from glaucoma to the side effects of chemotherapy. The rule was that if you're a licensed marijuana user, you could buy your medication from the government (which has one supplier, whose product many users say is vile), grow for yourself, or have one person grow for you and nobody else. This last condition, which Judge Strayer overturned, was meant to prevent the rise of entrepreneurial "compassion clubs," which are common particularly in California, where state laws are generous to medicinal-marijuana users. Supposedly compassion clubs blur the line between licit and illicit marijuana cultivation, making possible a vast underground economy in illegal marijuana production and use. Wouldn't want that. Yet as businesses that compete for licensed users or customers, compassion clubs have to provide good, safe marijuana at a price patients are willing to pay, with predictable levels of THC, cannabis's active substance. In short, they have to act a little like pharmaceutical companies. If sick Canadians can get access to reliable supplies, their doctors might overcome some of their squeamishness about prescribing marijuana. Currently, many doctors won't do it, and many of those who will are uncomfortable, as a series of Health Canada-sponsored interviews with 30 pot-prescribing physicians recently found. (The report the government released on those interviews is called Views of Physicians Regarding the Use of Marihuana for Medical Purposes. The government insists on calling medical cannabis "marihuana" instead of "marijuana," as if to imply they aren't exactly the same thing except for the paperwork.) Doctors worry that they don't have enough clinical knowledge when they recommend their patients use marijuana for medical reasons, Health Canada found. Often, the patients come up with the idea. Suffering from a problem they've heard marijuana can soothe, they find their own sources of the drug, find it helps them, and then go to their doctors for expert advice on how to use marijuana wisely -- advice the doctors too often don't possess. Sometimes most of what they know comes from their patients, according to the report. Marijuana is now in an awkward in-between state in Canada, legally permissible for some people but still legally distasteful. Leave aside the important questions of whether it's practical to wage war on a plant, or whether the government should. As a matter of law and of fact, marijuana is a regulated pharmaceutical and it should be treated with all the seriousness that implies. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom