MEDICAL TREATMENT OR ROAD TO A HIGH? PROOF MAY BE IN THE POT

Health Canada employees are busy packing marijuana into hundreds of baggies
for distribution to doctors who may wish to prescribe pot to their patients.

Handing dope over to doctors is another world first in public policy for
Canada but, in keeping with our current health care standards, it likely
won't be good medicine for anyone.

So why are we doing it? To appease the courts --which apparently are
directing health-care policies in Canada.

Marijuana has no proven scientific benefit, yet three years ago an Ontario
court ruled that the terminally ill should be able to use marijuana for
pain relief. But the purchase of marijuana remained illegal and
consequently an Ontario Superior Court ruled early this year that it was
unconstitutional for the government to withhold access to 'medical'
marijuana. The court gave Ottawa six months to comply.

Last week, Health Minister Anne McLellan announced that doctors would be
the new distribution system. Physicians would essentially become dealers
for a drug that is unproven in terms of benefits and untested for medical use.

No wonder the president of the B.C. Medical Association called the decision
"horrifying and mind-boggling."

Funny . . . don't we rely on the Health Protection Branch of the health
ministry to protect us from that very scenario? Most drugs go through years
of clinical testing before approval. There are likely hundreds of
medications in research trials that would benefit some, yet none of us
would advocate they be made available to patients first and undergo
efficacy/safety testing later.

Yet, primarily on anecdotal evidence, the court ordered the government to
bypass all the precautions. Even worse, the health minister is going along
with it.

McLellan called it a "compassionate" approach to healthcare. Even though
she acknowledged a lack of definitive evidence of medical benefits, she did
promise to start new clinical trials to determine if there is a therapeutic
benefit. In other words, she is bent on doing what she can to justify her
decision -- after the fact.

This is healthcare? Determining the efficacy of a drug after handing it
over to patients?

Sadly, this is how health care happens when our elected government in
Ottawa is content to subjugate its rule to the courts when the issues get
dicey.

Only in Canada do activists seek changes in medical policy via the courts.
Only in Canada do activists and the courts carry more power than objective
science in setting health policy.

Granted, some studies have concluded that marijuana has the potential to
treat pain, nausea and lack of appetite and this creates the perception
that there is scientific support for "medical" marijuana.

But researchers conclude these reports by stating that the detrimental
effects of marijuana far outnumber the potential benefits, thus it is not a
recommended treatment. A prescription drug that mimics these benefits is
available, so why place unknown risks on a patient's health?

Marijuana may well prove to be a legitimate drug. But the Canadian
government is actually retarding its medical progress by handing it out
without undergoing proper studies. It's a bad precedent for health care
and, frankly, it smacks of a lawsuit waiting to happen.