'MARIJUANA BANK' CLOSER TO REALITY

Professor Wants To Grow Drug At U Of T For Medicinal Use

A University of Toronto professor wants to create a "marijuana bank" that
doctors can draw from for their seriously ill patients.

If Dr. Diane Riley is successful, it would mean the final major hurdle has
been cleared for an Ottawa doctor who wants to legally prescribe marijuana
for one of his patients.

"I'd like a situation where physicians for the AIDS patients could come to
U of T and say 'We need access to your marijuana,' " says Dr. Riley, who is
an adjunct professor of behavioural science.

"These people who suffer, the quality of their lives is not good. I've
worked with AIDS people and I know marijuana can help them."

The marijuana bank would be authorized under the Controlled Drug and
Substance Act, which allows research institutes, universities and
pharmaceutical companies to test and produce drugs that are illegal under
the criminal code.

Last week, Dann Michols, the man in charge of regulating all drugs and
medical devices in Canada, said the major thing stopping Health Canada from
approving marijuana as a legal medicine is that there is no licenced
institute like the University of Toronto willing to grow a safe and
tested supply of marijuana for doctors.

"We have said this all along and our minister (Allan Rock) has said it all
along: Marijuana as a medicine is not an outlandish proposition," Mr.
Michols said.

"Marijuana is no different than morphine, no different than codeine, no
different than Aspirin. There just has to be a process where we are able to
say they have undertaken the right experiments and produced a result that
shows the benefit is greater than the risk for the individual patients."

Mr. Michols says Dr. Riley's plan has "a good chance" of being successful
if she gets permission from U of T to grow the marijuana. He says approval
could come within a month.

Dr. Riley was inspired to create the marijuana bank after hearing the story
of Dr. Don Kilby's fight to help Jean Charles Pariseau.

Mr. Pariseau, 30, is a Vanier man who has AIDS. Dr. Kilby found that
marijuana had helped Mr. Pariseau regain his appetite and control the
nausea caused by all the medication he takes.

After Mr. Pariseau was arrested by the RCMP in October and charged with
possession of marijuana, Dr. Kilby went looking for a legal way to get Mr.
Pariseau his marijuana.

Dr. Kilby applied to Health Canada's Emergency Drug Release Program to have
marijuana approved for Mr. Pariseau's use. This program allows unauthorized
medicines to be approved on a casebycase basis.

In his groundbreaking application, all Dr. Kilby had to do was prove that
the unapproved drug in this case, marijuana helped his patient.

Dr. Kilby's application was turned down for two reasons. First, he didn't
have a special research licence under the Controlled Drug and Substance
Act. He should be able to get a licence quickly.

He must also be able to list the drug's "manufacturer." Under Health Canada
guidelines, the "manufacturer" must be licenced and meet certain criteria
such as secure growing facilities and a medical credentials.

Enter Dr. Riley.

"I'm very excited for the outcome of the application," Dr. Riley says. "I
think Health Canada is implying that they are ready to let people have
access to marijuana as medicine."

Dr. Riley, who is also a founding member of the Canadian Foundation for
Drug Policy, has not received the official backing of the University of
Toronto yet, but she is confident it will come.

"I've done some preliminary investigations at the U of T, but because of
the holidays, I haven't actually pinned down the people who are responsible
for the decision," Dr. Riley says. "But I get the sense that they will be
favourable towards doing it. It shouldn't be a problem."

Dr. Riley envisions the school growing the test crops of marijuana in a
hothouse year round and outside in the summer.

Universities already do a great deal of experimenting with controlled
substances. A professor at Carleton University has done extensive research
on cocaine addiction by feeding it to rats.