HEALTH CANADA ANNOUNCED RULES FOR MEDICAL USE OF MARIJUANA

ALISON SMITH: A controversial move today by Health Canada. It announced new
rules for the use of marijuana as a medicine. They'll take effect at the
end of this month and will make Canada the first country in the world to
have a system in place to monitor or promote its use. Ioanna Roumeliotis
reports.

IOANNA ROUMELIOTIS (Reporter): Jim Wakeford smokes pot to ease the pain of
life with AIDS. He was the first Canadian to have the legal right to do it.
You'd think he'd feel vindicated.

JIM WAKEFORD: But this, this is an insult. This is not a solution. This is
not a remedy.

ROUMELIOTIS: The remedy is Health Canada's final draft on medical
marijuana, set to become law at the end of the month. Here are the broad
strokes. Canadians with serious medical conditions, like AIDS, can apply to
have the legal right to purchase, possess, and smoke pot to ease their
pain. They can grow their own supply or buy from a licensed grower, someone
they can designate. To ensure no run-ins with the law, Health Canada would
supply photo identification cards. Health Canada calls this a compassionate
move.

DR. JODY GOMBER (Health Canada): We're not suggesting it's a good thing.
What we're doing here is authorizing a certain activity that otherwise
would be illegal under the law. And so people who choose to do this are
actually going to be doing it at their own risk and expense.

ROUMELIOTIS: And that, it seems, is the big problem. The regulations don't
deal with where patients can find a safe supply of marijuana or even where
they can buy the seeds to grow their own. So far, there's only one company
licensed to grow medical marijuana, and it's only for clinical studies.
So-called compassion clubs exist supplying patients with marijuana, but
they remain unlicensed.

PHILIPPE LUCAS (Vancouver Island Compassion): Which is incredibly stressful
on our members and, as the director of this society, it's very stressful to
me that every time I come to work, basically the first thing I check for is
a paddy wagon outside of the shop.

ROUMELIOTIS: And there's another problem. The regulations stipulate
patients, or their producers, can't grow more than the dosage prescribed by
their doctors. But most doctors don't have training in illicit drugs, and
most don't want the responsibility.

DR. HUGH SCULLY (Canadian Medical Association): It may give you some relief
from some of the symptoms you're having, but it may be very negative in
other respects and so resistant to prescribing it at this stage.

ROUMELIOTIS: Health Canada knows it needs the doctors on board to make its
new policy on medical marijuana a reality. So the department is conducting
research to show doctors marijuana is a drug worth prescribing.

Ioanna Roumeliotis, CBC News, Toronto.