GET OFF THE POT

When the federal government decided, more than a year ago, to allow certain
individuals to use marijuana for medical reasons, its policy came from good
intentions. Marijuana appears to have many medical benefits, including
easing pain for sufferers of multiple sclerosis, curbing weight loss in
AIDS patients and alleviating chemotherapy-related nausea in cancer patients.

While the longer-term health effects seem far from beneficial, such
concerns matter little to those who are desperate for relief.

But the problem with Ottawa's existing system of exemptions, as an Alberta
judge pointed out this week, is that even if designated patients can grow
and possess marijuana legally for their own medicinal purposes, the fact
that there is still no legal supply of marijuana "triggers the absurdity,"
because a patient still has to commit an illegal act. Even if someone grows
their own, they still have to get the seeds from somewhere.

So Judge Darlene Acton, of the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench, has struck
down, on constitutional grounds, the federal law prohibiting the
cultivation of marijuana - but suspended her ruling for a year to give
Ottawa time to get its act together. If Ottawa ignores her ruling, it would
become legal for anyone to grow marijuana in Alberta.

That ruling follows a similar one last summer by the Ontario Appeal Court,
dealing with the possession of marijuana for medicinal purposes. That
court, too, gave Ottawa a year to get its act together.

These rulings are the judicial equivalents of two-by-fours smacking smartly
down upon Ottawa's head. The Ontario one already had got the federal
government's attention, but this new Alberta ruling will reinforce the message.

After the earlier ruling, Ottawa had undertaken to come up with new rules
by July 31. How it plans to satisfy the courts remains unclear, but it
looks as if the system of individual exemptions might have to be replaced
with broader revisions of the relevant articles of the Controlled Drugs and
Substances Act.

Ottawa also obviously needs to press ahead with its plans to authorize a
domestic supplier of marijuana for medical purposes. So far, it has called
for applications to supply marijuana for medical research and clinical
trials for the next five years, but no contract has yet been awarded. In
any case, that marijuana will not be available to individual patients
(except through clinical trials). One can sympathize with the Health
Department's wish to proceed in a scientific manner, but that doesn't help
those who want some relief now.

It's up to Ottawa to get off the, er, pot and follow through on its good
intentions.