A BUDDING BUREAUCRACY

Why are we not surprised that the distribution of medicinal
marijuana, meticulously and expensively grown down in a disused mine
in Manitoba at taxpayers' expense, has become mired in bureaucratic
paper-shuffling?

The medicinal-marijuana program had been pushed ahead hard by Allan
Rock, when he was health minister. As a result, the Canadian
government now owns 250 kilograms of primo bud, currently stored in
bales in a climate-controlled warehouse guarded by the RCMP, at your
expense.

What happened to the program is what should have happened originally
- - medical experts were asked their opinion. Mr. Rock's custom-grown
Manitoba Gold hasn't undergone the tests every other therapeutic drug
must pass, and so Canada's major doctors' groups have advised their
members to have nothing to do with prescriptions for the stuff. And
there's a hint that Anne McLellan, the new health minister, is less
than enthusiastic.

There's a powerful metaphor here, and a lesson about how government
works, or doesn't work, all too often: this affair combined benign
intentions, a chance to do well (in the Liberal leadership race) by
"doing good"; too little forethought; and eagerness for a good photo
op. The result is inertia, confusion, disappointment for the 800 poor
souls who were promised good dope legally and now can't get it - and,
of course, tax money poured down a mine shaft.