MEDICAL POT SALE DECISION PLEASES LOCAL PHARMACIST

Health Canada's plan to permit pharmacies in British Columbia to sell
medical marijuana is being lauded by a Windsor pharmacist who watched
his younger brother suffer for a year before dying of cancer.

"Patients who are sick need that option for pain relief," said Dennis
Koren, 35, the pharmacist at Avenue Pharmacy on Ouellette Avenue. "In
conjunction with traditional therapies, it could really help out
patients with pain and nausea."

Koren's brother, David, was just 29 when he died from colon and liver
cancer in June 2002. Traditional drugs didn't alleviate the intense
pain he suffered for nearly a year, but marijuana might have helped.

"If that option was available to us at the time, we probably would
have used it. You just don't want to see somebody in pain and suffering."

Health Canada, in a pilot project that could spread across the nation,
plans on permitting B.C. pharmacies to sell Health Canada marijuana
grown in Flin Flon, Man.

The proposal doesn't allow the pharmacists to sell government
marijuana to non-approved users, but the access and visibility could
cause the number of approved users to swell.

The project would make Canada the second country, after the
Netherlands, to permit the direct sale of medical marijuana in
pharmacies. It is being tried in B.C. because the province's college
of pharmacists came out strongly in favour of the proposal last fall.

Ontario's college of pharmacists has reserved judgment on the plan
pending the results of the pilot project, said spokesman Layne Verbeek.

Other Windsor pharmacists welcomed the pilot project provided the
marijuana was only distributed to approved patients with strict
guidelines in place.

"My concern is diversion to the unapproved market," said Mike Hunter
of Hunter's Pharmacy. He added it would be "wrong and irresponsible"
for Canada to legalize the drug for non-medical use.

Ontario pharmacists could distribute marijuana as easily as any other
drug, added Raymond Bloch, the pharmacist at Shoppers Drug Mart at
Wyandotte Street East and Ouellette Avenue.

He said pharmacies are already stocked with "more recreational"
narcotics like Demoral, Dilaudid and Oxycontin. "I don't have a
position on its use so long as it's prescribed."

More than 700 patients, including six local ones, are authorized to
use marijuana for medical reasons, but only 78 can buy Health Canada's
pot, which is sold for $5 per gram.

It's not just paperwork preventing approved users from getting Health
Canada marijuana, but the poor quality of the drug itself, said Fred
Pritchard of Windsor's Marijuana Compassion Club. "It's garbage. I've
never seen anything like this on the street, even when I was a kid."

Patients who haven't qualified for government-grown marijuana can grow
their own, designate someone to grow it for them or purchase it from a
government-sanctioned grower.