REEFER MADNESS

WAKE UP CALL: If your phone rings on a Saturday morning, pray it's a
huckster. Don't let it be some anonymous Ottawa bureaucrat calling to
alert you your sensitive personal information has been leaked to a
journalist. So much for privacy, confidence and your tax dollars at
work.

"I was having breakfast: Bacon, eggs, toast," recalls Giff, one of 128
Canadians who got an alarming call from Health Canada last weekend. "A
man asked if I was who I am. Then he tells me my name is on a
confidential list of people who have inquired about or applied for the
use of medical marijuana. And that it's fallen into the hands of a
news organization."

He looks at his call display, hoping for an instant it's a joke, a
cruel hoax. The phone display shows ... Caller Unknown. "My god," he
thinks. "This is my worst fear: Getting personal with the government."
What if the list is published? Seen by neighbours, enemies, the OPP,
Mounties, insurers? He knows the headline will be: Pot List.

"It was his flat, bureaucratic voice that convinced me it was real,"
he says.

Giff is one of many victims of AIDS, cancer, MS or chronic pain who
have inquired about medical marijuana. Last fall, a dozen Canadians
were granted an exemption from Criminal Code prosecution to use the
controlled narcotic without fear of prosecution. More are interested.
Health Canada is where these confidential inquiries are kept, under
tight security.

"They give you this bombshell, and then a number to call where you get
a tape," he reports. It's Saturday! Nobody will answer for two days!

As it turns out, the guy we're calling Giff hasn't even applied for
the exemption. His real name is on the list because his doctor thought
he was a good candidate for exemption.

"My doctor sent a two-page letter to Health Canada last fall with my
birthdate, name and address saying that I was a responsible person and
it was a reasonable request," Giff says. The department sent him a
swath of forms for completion. They're still sitting on his desk. One
of the questions for his doctor: Has Giff taken thalidomide? "Why
they'd rather have me take thalidomide than smoke marijuana is beside
the fact. They list a whole range of drugs they'd rather see me take
than make the exemption.

"I didn't mail it back," he says. "I paused to think: Do I want my
medical records in the hands of the government? You know I'll
automatically be typed or coded or filed: Pro-marijuana. I didn't feel
any fire was burning (to apply) and I wanted to talk about those
issues with my doctor." Saturday's "whoops" call was hardly
reassuring. But when federal offices re-opened Monday, Giff talked to
the federal privacy commission.

"They had no explanation," he says. "They wouldn't tell me who the
reporter was; whether TV, the local paper or Canadian Press. Both the
privacy commission and Health Canada have launched an investigation.
They asked me if I wanted to file a complaint. I said 'YES!' " They
added him to another list.

"People don't really want a whole lot of government in their lives,"
he ventures. "I think people are happiest when they pay their taxes,
get their licence renewed, cross all the T's, dot all the I's and
otherwise their home is their castle and their life is whatever. To be
phoned on the weekend by a government official on a sensitive subject
makes you remember every paranoid movie you've ever seen. The ones
where they take your ID card away from you, or access your accounts,
or say you're not who you are. The bottom line is: something like this
just shouldn't happen."

Health Canada has apologized for its "breach of confidentiality," and
says it will be "doubly appalled" if an investigation shows the list
was deliberately released by a branch employee. At best, a clumsy
mistake. At worst, a malicious act. Does Giff think he -- or any of
the 128 Canadians who've spent the last few days fearful, apprehensive
- -- will ever get an explanation of what happened?

"No," he says. "They certainly indicated I'd be the last to
know."

In Canada, our much-yapped-about "privacy rights" only shield
government screw-ups.