NEW POT RULES RAISE QUESTIONS

Revisions to a law that allows extremely ill patients to grow and use
marijuana to quell nausea are being both applauded and questioned in Penticton.

Terminally ill patients with a year left to live can apply through Health
Canada to legally get pot. So can people with symptoms associated with
certain serious medical conditions, such as multiple sclerosis and severe
arthritis.

Patients with other medical conditions are eligible if their request is
backed by at least two doctors.

Use sanctioned by Health Canada isn't exactly new, said Penticton resident
Leslie Gibbenhuck.

For the past few years, Gibbenhuck has sought redress for people suffering
with hepatitis C. She knows of at least three people in the Penticton area
who applied and were quietly given the nod in the past year.

"The forms are available over the Internet, and a doctor signs them. It's
quite a simple process," she said.

The regulations that came into effect Monday are in response to an Ontario
judge's order that the federal government clarify its rules governing
marijuana use.

While Gibbenhuck worries the new regulations may be tighter than warranted,
Dr. Malcolm Brigden, head of the oncology department at Penticton Regional
Hospital, questions the requirement that a terminally ill patient have a
prognosis of a year to live.

"Even with a prognosis of 12 months, who knows when a person will die?"
said Brigden, who will leave Penticton to head a four-person oncology unit
in Wichita, Kan., in September. "Will someone check in: 'You should be
dead, give me your marijuana back.'?"

In general, he sees the continuing refinement of marijuana regulation for
medical purposes as a positive step, provided it doesn't create an extra
level of bureaucracy.

"I think there will be great interest in this program. There is great
anecdotal underground interest," Brigden said. "I definitely think this is
a step forward."

While in the South Okanagan the past five years, he has seen about 350 new
patients annually.

Brigden estimates 10 per cent of his patients have "implied either directly
or indirectly" they dabbled in marijuana use when traditional anti-nausea
drugs failed to provide relief.

"I was surprised that a significant number of older patients had younger
relatives supply them (with marijuana)," he said. "When you consider that
only half of patients tell a doctor what they are actually taking . . .
it's probably a lot higher than that."

Unlike Brigden, Dr. Elizabeth Landecker, medical director of Moog and
Friends Hospice House, said she has seen little evidence her palliative
patients are using marijuana.

Landecker questioned how many extremely ill patients have the energy to
either smoke up or consume marijuana.

She would be willing to authorize such use, she added, if a patient so chose.