POT PRESCRIPTIONS LEAVE DOCTORS COLD

Physicians Are As Reluctant As The Government To Make Marijuana
Available For Medical Use

Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca MP Keith Martin says he's a doctor, not a
farmer, and refuses to distribute seeds for the government. The seeds
he and other doctors across Canada are expected to dispense to
patients who qualify for them are marijuana seeds which Health Canada, with
extreme reluctance, is making available for medical purposes.

The government has been forced to make pot available to approved users by
the Ontario Superior Court. Health Canada had initiated the medical
use of marijuana as a trial, but hadn't made any provision for
distributing it.

The Ontario court found this situation ridiculous, and said in January that
if the government didn't come up with a way to distribute medical
marijuana -- both seeds and dried weed -- to approved users by July
10, the medical use program would become invalid, and possession of pot
would no longer be an offence in Ontario.

The government declared it would appeal the decision -- the hearing is
to begin next Tuesday -- and only on July 9, one day before the
deadline, Health Canada came up with a scheme under which doctors
would distribute pot to approved medical users.

Canada's doctors want no part of it. Dr. Dana Hanson, president of the
Canadian Medical Association, protested that a physician shouldn't be the
"gatekeeper" for a substance for which there's inadequate proof of safety
or effectiveness.

The association has warned since 2001, when former health minister
Allan Rock started the medical marijuana program, that doctors don't
know enough about pot to inform patients properly about its risks and
benefits, threatening what they regard as the all-important
patient-physician relationship. It said doctors should not be
controlling access to a drug that hasn't been subjected to a
pre-market regulatory review of safety, purity and efficacy, as is
routine for prescription drugs.

The CMA warned doctors after the distribution rules were announced
July 9 that they would participate "at their professional and legal
peril." It said doctors should be able to "opt in" to the program,
creating a registry of providers to which patients could be referred.

It said doctors should provide access to pot as a "clinical" trial
with monitoring of patients, and be given liability protection by
Health Canada, in case things go wrong.

Everything has gone wrong in the government's approach to marijuana.
It brought in legislation, reluctantly, to make the possession of
fewer than five grams of pot a non-criminal offence, but allowed the
bill to languish in limbo over the summer holidays. It has authorized
the medical use of the drug, but provided no satisfactory way for
anyone to take advantage of it. It has cut funds for research into the
usefulness of pot for medical purposes.

Health Canada's Medical Marijuana Access Regulations are as
encouraging to prospective patients as the gruesome health warnings on
cigarette packs. All the possible bad side effects are laid out, and
users are warned not to smoke it, and if they do, to do it in private.

It's still the evil weed as far as Ottawa's concerned.