AT WORK PROFESSORS GET ROOMS OF THEIR OWN

Universities Give Ailing Staff Space To Smoke Drug

Crouched on a tattered rug, Doug Hutchinson casually pulls out a
joint, lights it and sucks deeply on the pungent weed, while barely
interrupting his animated monologue. It is one of about 10 pot
cigarettes he will consume this day.

The tenured professor of philosophy is not only a legal user of
medical marijuana, but he is "medicating" at the heart of the
University of Toronto's picturesque Trinity College, in a room
assigned to him expressly for smoking up.

Prof. Hutchinson appears to be the first employee in Canada to be
given a venue for smoking medical marijuana on the job, and his
accomplishment was duplicated yesterday by a criminologist at York
University.

Marijuana activists say they hope other employers will join the club
and accommodate workers who, they argue, can only become more
productive if allowed to smoke pot on the job to better cope with
pain, nausea or epilepsy.

"If I couldn't use marijuana here at work, I would have to kill
myself. It makes all the difference," says Prof. Hutchinson. "You can
lead a surprisingly effective life drowning in cannabis."

Trinity College's decision last month to offer him the room may evoke
for some images of a campus turned pothead heaven. But the 51-year-old
scholar of ancient philosophy says his smoking never makes him high,
and does sharpen his ability to analyze complex texts in dead
languages and teach intricate Platonic ideas.

The tall, gangly academic is one of about 1,000 Canadians who have
been authorized by Health Canada to consume cannabis as a treatment
for chronic pain, nausea caused by chemotherapy or disease, tremors
triggered by multiple sclerosis, and other conditions. He will not
divulge his own health problems for privacy reasons. Activists say
there are several thousand others who use pot for medical purposes but
have not received the government endorsement.

It seems many have either taken their drugs at home, or done so
surreptitiously while at work.

Brian MacLean was one of those, forced to "skulk" around York
University in suburban Toronto, despite his medical marijuana
authorization from Health Canada. The criminology professor says he
needs a hit at least every four hours to treat a severe form of
degenerative arthritis. But late this past week, the York
administration informed him it would provide a ventilated office in
his building, Vari Hall, for cannabis treatment.

A German manufacturer, meanwhile, is donating the university a
"vaporizer," a device that heats marijuana until the THC --the active
chemical -- is vaporized and can be inhaled without taking in the tar
and other toxic ingredients in pot smoke.

At a downtown Toronto marijuana cafe this week, Prof. MacLean
demonstrates the machine, drawing on a plastic bag inflated with THC
vapour.

"We've gone through everything and this is what allows me to get
through the day," said Prof. MacLean, the author of 14 books in his
field, and currently on a one-year contract at York.

Like Prof. Hutchinson, he says prolonged, heavy use of marijuana has
meant the drug no longer makes him high. It does render more faint the
constant "beating" of pain he feels throughout his limbs, made worse
by a car accident three years ago that broke his back in three places.

But not everyone is happy about such on-the-job arrangements, with
even a student newspaper in London, Ont., asking "should professors in
an altered state of mind be allowed to teach at a university?"

Prof. Hutchinson -- who has a doctorate from Oxford University, reads
Latin and ancient Greek and co-edited a complete works of Plato --
simply challenges critics of the policy to check out his work. That
includes a critique in the works of a Plutarch essay against the Epicureans.

"They [naysayers] should come to my classes, they should read my
articles, they should read my complete works of Plato," he said. "I
couldn't have finished that project without marijuana."

The process of getting the room was by all accounts a rocky one,
pitting Prof. Hutchinson against Margaret MacMillan, the provost, or
head, of Trinity College and a famed historian who wrote the
bestseller Paris 1919.

She said yesterday any delay in granting her colleague's request was
simply a result of the novelty of the situation. There had been
complaints from people "who didn't like smoke of any kind," and
concerns about endorsing drug use in the midst of young students,
Prof. MacMillan said.

But once the college was satisfied it was a medical requirement, she
said, it moved ahead with setting up the room, a drab basement space
with a single window and ventilation fan.

"I suspect it is not going to go away," the provost said of demands
for workplace pot use. "If it alleviates symptoms, clearly it's a good
thing."

At York, administrators also felt they had no choice, treating Prof.
MacLean's marijuana use like any other medical need of an employee,
said Alex Bilyk, a university spokesman.

"Now that we've gone through this, we can certainly make similar
arrangements should they be requested by someone else," he said.

While some debate continues about the efficacy of marijuana as a
therapy, the science behind it is beginning to accumulate, said Linda
Parker, a psychologist at the University of Guelph. Animal studies
have shown it to be effective in treating pain and nausea. The brain's
cannibinoid receptors, only discovered in the early 1990s, are proving
to be a key and prevalent system that serves a protective function
during strokes and epileptic seizures, she said. THC mimics the
effects of the receptors.

Tracy Curley of the Toronto Compassion Centre, one of a network of
clubs across Canada that supplies marijuana for medical uses, urged
other employers to follow the universities' lead, even if it is just
to let medical marijuana users smoke pot on the premises.

"Do I think that people should be allowed to smoke away in their
offices? No, not an all-day thing.... But if you need to medicate,
there are ways you can do it."