ARREARS REVEAL FLAWS IN MEDICAL POT SYSTEM

Users Owe Ottawa More Than $500,000

OTTAWA - Medical marijuana users are on the hook for more than
$500,000 in unpaid bills for government-certified weed, raising
questions about the effectiveness of Health Canada's troubled dope program.

Newly disclosed statistics show that Health Canada has sent final
notices - and sometimes dispatched a collection agency as well - to
462 registered users since government marijuana first became available in 2003.

"Most of the 462 individuals who have received a letter regarding
their accounts in arrears have had their shipment ceased," department
spokesman Paul Duchesne said in an e-mail.

The unpaid bills, totalling $554,255 as of Dec. 31, have tripled in
value in the last two years and have resulted in some seriously ill
citizens returning to the black market for their medication. The
marijuana distribution service was specifically designed to give
patients a legal alternative to street dope.

Officials have handed 29 overdue accounts to collection agencies who
so far have been able to recoup just $2,000.

The statistics, acquired through the Access to Information Act and
questions to Health Canada, suggest a deeply flawed program as the
number of users in arrears has soared to about two-thirds of all 739
patients licensed to buy government dope.

A series of adverse court rulings since 2000 forced Health Canada
into the medical marijuana business. The program licenses certified
users who've been prescribed cannabis by their doctors, and allows
them to grow their own, have someone grow it for them, or buy
directly from the department.

Health Canada has paid Prairie Plant Systems Inc. more than $10
million to cultivate a strain of pot in a mine shaft in Flin Flon,
Man. Accredited patients can then buy the dope, with a THC content -
the active ingredient - of 12.5 per cent, for $5 a gram.

The department has said it plans eventually to end its licensing of
home-grown dope, forcing all medical users to buy their supplies
directly from the government, perhaps through pharmacy distribution.
Prairie Plant Systems now couriers the weed in 30-gram packets
directly to users.Health Canada previously allowed a 90-day grace
period for payment but has since reduced it to 30 days before
considering an account in arrears. Other restrictive changes have
been made to the program in the last two years, including efforts to
persuade doctors to keep doses low.

Many seriously ill medical users are impoverished, unable to work,
and survive on disability payments, provincial drug plans and
charity. Medical marijuana has never been assigned official drug
status by Health Canada and is therefore not covered by pharmacare programs.

Users typically smoke marijuana to combat nausea and pain associated
with chronic ailments, resulting from such infections as HIV and
hepatitis C, after standard medicines fail. Jason Wilcox of Victoria
currently owes Health Canada $6,770.06, a number that will increase
with interest charges each month.

Wilcox, 37, has been HIV-positive since at least 1993, and needs 10
grams of marijuana daily for nausea, for severe pain in his foot and
to help him sleep.

He says he became angry on learning that Health Canada charges users
1,500 per cent more than it pays Prairie Plant Systems for the dope.

"At that point, I refused to pay," he said in an interview. "Also,
not to mention that their product is crap."

Wilcox and his wife Theresa Anne Genovy, who herself owes Health
Canada $3,297.21 for medical marijuana, now grow what they can but
must still return to the streets for their full doses.

"I have no other source than the illegal underground," he says. "The
only medication I pay for in this province is cannabis."