MARIJUANA PLAN IS TAKING TOO LONG

Health Minister Anne McLellan admits to being uncomfortable with the idea
of people smoking marijuana to relieve pain and other conditions.

The minister, however, has little choice but to proceed. The courts have
ruled that the sick have a right to take marijuana. Ottawa must either get
on with setting up a system of regulated marijuana use, or give up on
controlling marijuana use altogether.

Ottawa has promised a regulated system, but getting it going seems to be
taking forever.

The government's first official crop, grown in an abandoned mine in
Manitoba, contained too many strains of marijuana to be used in clinical
trials that are key to reassuring physicians about prescribing the drug for
medical conditions.

As McLellan has said, such trials must use marijuana of consistent quality
so researchers know what they're measuring.

Key to the government's regulation plan is use of physicians as the
gatekeepers for who will be allowed the drug. That is a role doctors
rightly feel comfortable with only when there's scientific evidence on
which to base their decisions.

Sufferers who do get their doctor's blessing still face the challenge of
supply. Not everyone wants to grow their own plants and a government supply
seems a long way off. Fortunately, there are more marijuana sources for the
sick than there once were. Groups like Vancouver's Compassion Club, which
supplies pot to 2,000 members, are springing up.

"We exist in the space between the way the law is written and the way the
law is enforced," says

Hilary Black, founder of the Vancouver club. Yet that space can shrink at
any moment. The Toronto Compassion Centre was raided by police last week.

The government must end the legal limbo by determining, once and for all,
the validity of marijuana as a treatment. If the drug meets the test, it
should be made available in a safe, simple way to those who are prescribed it.