PATIENTS GET POT OK, BUT NO SUPPLY

OTTAWA -- You can legally grow marijuana if you're sick enough, or
name a person to grow it for you, but you can't legally get the seeds
under federal regulations announced yesterday.

The new rules, to take effect at the end of the month, will make
Canada the first country in the world with a regulatory system
governing medicinal marijuana. But they don't address the key issue
of supply.

The federal system will allow people with certain serious medical
conditions to possess pot and cultivate it, or designate a person to
cultivate it for them. To qualify they must have a doctor's
endorsement.

But the system provides no source of safe, tested marijuana for
patients unless they are part of a research program. Nor does it
provide a source of tested seeds or cuttings to start a crop. "Right
now, so far as I'm aware, there is no legal source of seeds,"
conceded Judy Gomber, director general of Health Canada's office of
controlled substances.

The regulations require doctors to make recommendations on dosage
even though there is no way to know the potency of the pot being used
and little scientific evidence that pot actually has medical
benefits. Hugh Scully, past president of the Canadian Medical
Association, sharply attacked the contradictions.

"These regulations are placing Canadian physicians and their patients
in the precarious position of attempting to access a product that has
not gone through the normal protocols of rigorous pre-market testing."

A senior federal official acknowledged the new policy leaves
unanswered questions, especially regarding supply, sale and
distribution.

"We're doing something that hasn't been tried before," he said.
Prairie Plant Systems of Saskatoon, the company contracted to grow
pot for the federal government, is expected to deliver standardized
and tested pot next year.

In the meantime, patients are left to rely on black market sources.
Details of the medical marijuana program and applications for
authorization to cultivate and possess marijuana, are on the Health
Department Web site (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/).