MEDICINAL POT 'MORE HARMFUL' THAN TOBACCO

Doctors Press Ottawa To Ban Smoked Marijuana

Smoking marijuana is more harmful than smoking tobacco and the federal
government should not allow it to be used for medicinal purposes until it
is available in a pill or some other form, a doctors' group says.

A delegation of doctors from the 1,400-member Physicians for a Smoke Free
Canada will meet Thursday with Health Canada officials in an attempt to
convince them of the "hypocrisy" of sanctioning the use of smoked marijuana
while at the same time spending hundreds of millions of dollars on
anti-tobacco strategies.

Dr. Jim Walker, the Ottawa dermatologist who is a co-founder of the group,
said the government is sending mixed messages to the public.

"There may be evidence of beneficial compounds in marijuana, but I
guarantee if you burn the plant and inhale it, you are being exposed to
toxic compounds. If they were just going to sanction it for terminally ill
people, that's one thing, but many people with chronic diseases are also
included in this and so what they are doing is totally hypocritical,
irresponsible and illogical from a scientific, health care point of view,"
Walker said.

Walker said his group's message at Thursday's meeting will be that "smoke
is a dirty delivery system" and allowing the use of marijuana in the rolled
"joint" form wreaks even more damage to health than cigarettes since
marijuana smoke contains even more tar and cancer-causing toxins.

The meeting is to take place just as the first harvest of a
government-sanctioned crop of marijuana is being tested for purity at
undisclosed locations. In the next month, the first shipments of marijuana
produced by a private growing-operation in an underground mine in Flin
Flon, Manitoba, will be sent to various researchers across the country.

Grants to study the effects of marijuana as a treatment for pain, nausea
and other symptoms associated with various health conditions are being
awarded through an $8 million fund for research projects and clinical
trials over five years.

Andrew Swift, a spokesman for Health Canada, said he doesn't disagree with
the physicians' group that smoking marijuana is as harmful to the
respiratory and cardiovascular systems as smoking tobacco, if not more so.

"We certainly share the concerns of the doctors ... but our motivation is
based on a desire to advance knowledge associated with its use for
medicinal purposes and on compassionate grounds for those who are
suffering," Swift said.

The government isn't advocating the use of marijuana, he said. "We have
simply removed the legal barriers to possessing marijuana for medicinal
purposes."

Asked if it wasn't hypocritical for the government to be allowing smoked
marijuana at the same time as it is trying to prevent children from smoking
or getting adults to stop, he said:

"It's not at all the same thing. This is not a method of treatment for
everyone. It's a last resort for people who find that normal methods are
not meeting their needs."

While the government is funding one clinical trial exploring an oral,
smoke-free, delivery system, the practicality of "contracting with a
company to bake marijuana brownies is just not an option at this point," he
said

Dr. Atul Kapur, president of the physicians' group, said there are so many
pollutants and carcinogens in smoked marijuana that the government's
position is untenable.

A report by the group states that marijuana smokers tend to inhale smoke in
marijuana more deeply into their lungs. Two or three joints has the same
damaging effect as a pack of cigarettes, according to their research.

The group says Health Canada should be investigating different delivery
systems such as asthma-like inhalers, transdermal patches, injection or
pills before sanctioning medicinal marijuana.

New Health Canada regulations came into effect last summer to protect
certain patients with chronic or terminal illnesses against prosecution for
possession of marijuana.