POT WOULD MAKE IT A HEALTHY COOKIE

Re: Politicians Are As Pig-Headed About Health Care As Dr. Duckett Was About
Eating His Cookie, Tasha Kheiriddin, Nov. 23.

Tasha Kheiriddin ends her tale of cookies-before-a-press-conference
with what she sees as the elephant in the room -- that our beloved
state funded, single-payer monopoly of health care is financially
unsustainable. Her solution to clean up all the elephant dung? To
bring out the shovels of private health insurance premiums and user
fees. Forget about the other elephants of aging population, dramatic
increased spending on screening investigative testing, whopping cost
overruns for provincial drug benefit payments, unnecessary patient
demands for testing, etc.

However, don't get rid of the cookie. Lace it instead with marijuana,
using the Health Canada Medical Marijuana Program. Benefits include:
better pain control, less nausea from cancer chemotherapy, better
sleep, improvements in mood stabilization, less costs for opiate
(narcotic) medications and weekly pain injection treatments, cost
saving via reduced diagnostic testing, decreases in MD/emerge/lab
visits (and costs). And at the end of the day, if a sick patient is a
little "high," what's wrong with that?

Dr. David Saul, exclusively practicing cannabinology, Toronto.