LOOKING FOR THE GREEN LINING

A view of Canada's medical marijuana system

How the program works, how it could be better, and one man's treatment

As a young law student, Francois Arcand had his future set up. What
Arcand could not have planned for was the massive arteriovenous
malformation that burst inside his brain in 1989, when he was only 20
years old. The ruptured vessel, which was caused by an abnormal and
usually congenital connection between veins and arteries, left Arcand
paralysed on the right side of his body.

Eventually, Arcand was able to regain some movement and learned to
talk and walk again, but the scar tissue that built up around the
malformation left him severely epileptic by 1990. Arcand was left
experiencing measurable seizures 24 hours a day.

The mixture of medications Arcand was taking helped alleviate some of
the convulsions that accompanied each episode, but did not help to
reduce the amount of epileptic seizures that still occurred in the
brain. Arcand could only describe his condition as constantly
"thinking trhough cotton wool." The incessant epileptic episodes were
taking a toll on him.

"It made my life basically a living hell. People used to think that I
was actually dying of AIDS. I couldn't eat," explained Arcand. "I
looked like a skeleton."

With a simple suggestion from his mother that he try marijuana for his
epilepsy, Arcand's life changed dramatically in 1998.

The birth of a medical marijuana system

In 1997, Terrance Parker was fighting his way through the Ontario
justice system following his arrest for the cultivation and possession
of marijuana. Parker, an epileptic since childhood, had been using
marijuana as a treatment to reduce the frequency of his seizures.

By 2000, Parker's case had been heard by the Ontario Court of Appeals.
In July of that year, Justice Marc Rosenberg struck down the
prohibition against marijuana since it infringed on Parker's right to
liberty and security of person. The courts granted the federal
government one year to modify the law and to grant medical users, like
Parker, access. In the following year the federal government and
Health Canada implemented the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations to
allow access to those that suffer from "grave and debilitating
illnesses."

In order to be licensed under the MMAR program, applicants must fall
into one of two categories. The first category consists of patients
with multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury or disease, cancer,
HIV/AIDS infection, a severe case of arthritis or epilepsy. The second
category is reserved for patients who have a debilitating symptom or
illness that is not included under the first category and that is
confirmed by a specialist. A category two patient must also have
sought all other possible treatments but found that marijuana is the
only one that works.

As of January 2010, 4,884 patients in Canada hold an Authorization to
Possess card which allows them to use dried marijuana. Of all the
provinces and territories, Ontario, the location of the groundbreaking
decision, has the most patients with 1,873. British Columbia with
1,372 patients and Nova Scotia with 619 round out the top three.
Quebec falls fifth on the list behind Alberta, with 321 patients
holding a card.

While the federal government may see the current system as an adequate
solution to the questions posed by Parker's case, others have seen the
MMAR program as a Band-Aid to save the prohibition on marijuana.

"Health Canada didn't wake up one day and realize that there are
millions of people benefiting from marijuana and decide to help them,"
said Adam Greenblatt, founder of the Medical Cannabis Access Society.
"The courts forced them in to this and they've taken a very reluctant
approach."

From a suggestion to treatment

Following his mother's suggestion in 1998, Arcand sought out
information on using marijuana to treat his epilepsy. After consulting
with his neurologist he turned to the street to find a dealer. Using
marijuana cut down the amount of epileptic seizures he experienced but
did not eliminate them. An additional benefit of the drug was that his
appetite returned to normal.

"I went from a man that weighed 120 or 135 pounds back to 165 pounds,
which is the weight I weighed before the brain hemorrhage," said
Arcand.

After Parker's case opened up a legal way to access medical marijuana,
Arcand was sure that he would be given a licence. However, none of the
doctors or specialists were willing to fill out the necessary forms
and prescribe a dosage to enrol him in the MMAR program. They
preferred to give him a letter attesting to his condition so that he
would be able to purchase marijuana at a compassion club, a location
set up to distribute medical marijuana.

Arcand turned down the letters because compassion clubs are not part
of the federal program and because they are susceptible to raids and
other legal ramifications. In the end, he found a physician willing to
enroll him in the program in 2002. Arcand's intuition also turned out
to be right since this past summer a wide-scale raid hit the
compassion clubs of Quebec that accepted letters signed by physicians.

Compassion clubs are not legally allowed, but police normally permit
them to function as long as they remain transparent and maintain a
strict set of rules regarding membership. Many clubs enforce a daily
purchase limit for members and keep prices relatively high to prevent
the possibility of resale on the streets.

Health Canada stresses to MMAR patients that compassion clubs are
illegal and that their program is the only legal venue to fulfil their
prescriptions. Patients have the option to buy ground marijuana from
Health Canada, grow their own plants, or designate a grower that will
supply enough for their prescription.

A new world of cannabinoids

The question of how to supply himself with enough medical marijuana
led Arcand to Greenblatt and his organization in 2009. MCAS either
pairs MMAR patients with a designated grower or will teach card
holders how to supply themselves. Greenblatt, who is a designated
grower himself, immediately had Arcand try a number of cannabis
strains. After some experimentation, Arcand had the perfect mixture to
treat his condition.

As a young law student, Francois Arcand had his future set up. What
Arcand could not have planned for was the massive arteriovenous
malformation that burst inside his brain in 1989, when he was only 20
years old. The ruptured vessel, which was caused by an abnormal and
usually congenital connection between veins and arteries, left Arcand
paralysed on the right side of his body.

Eventually, Arcand was able to regain some movement and learned to
talk and walk again, but the scar tissue that built up around the
malformation left him severely epileptic by 1990. Arcand was left
experiencing measurable seizures 24 hours a day.

The mixture of medications Arcand was taking helped alleviate some of
the convulsions that accompanied each episode, but did not help to
reduce the amount of epileptic seizures that still occurred in the
brain. Arcand could only describe his condition as constantly
"thinking trhough cotton wool." The incessant epileptic episodes were
taking a toll on him.

"It made my life basically a living hell. People used to think that I
was actually dying of AIDS. I couldn't eat," explained Arcand. "I
looked like a skeleton."

With a simple suggestion from his mother that he try marijuana for his
epilepsy, Arcand's life changed dramatically in 1998.

The birth of a medical marijuana system

In 1997, Terrance Parker was fighting his way through the Ontario
justice system following his arrest for the cultivation and possession
of marijuana. Parker, an epileptic since childhood, had been using
marijuana as a treatment to reduce the frequency of his seizures.

By 2000, Parker's case had been heard by the Ontario Court of Appeals.
In July of that year, Justice Marc Rosenberg struck down the
prohibition against marijuana since it infringed on Parker's right to
liberty and security of person. The courts granted the federal
government one year to modify the law and to grant medical users, like
Parker, access. In the following year the federal government and
Health Canada implemented the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations to
allow access to those that suffer from "grave and debilitating
illnesses."

In order to be licensed under the MMAR program, applicants must fall
into one of two categories. The first category consists of patients
with multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury or disease, cancer,
HIV/AIDS infection, a severe case of arthritis or epilepsy. The second
category is reserved for patients who have a debilitating symptom or
illness that is not included under the first category and that is
confirmed by a specialist. A category two patient must also have
sought all other possible treatments but found that marijuana is the
only one that works.

As of January 2010, 4,884 patients in Canada hold an Authorization to
Possess card which allows them to use dried marijuana. Of all the
provinces and territories, Ontario, the location of the groundbreaking
decision, has the most patients with 1,873. British Columbia with
1,372 patients and Nova Scotia with 619 round out the top three.
Quebec falls fifth on the list behind Alberta, with 321 patients
holding a card.

While the federal government may see the current system as an adequate
solution to the questions posed by Parker's case, others have seen the
MMAR program as a Band-Aid to save the prohibition on marijuana.

"Health Canada didn't wake up one day and realize that there are
millions of people benefiting from marijuana and decide to help them,"
said Adam Greenblatt, founder of the Medical Cannabis Access Society.
"The courts forced them in to this and they've taken a very reluctant
approach."

From a suggestion to treatment

Following his mother's suggestion in 1998, Arcand sought out
information on using marijuana to treat his epilepsy. After consulting
with his neurologist he turned to the street to find a dealer. Using
marijuana cut down the amount of epileptic seizures he experienced but
did not eliminate them. An additional benefit of the drug was that his
appetite returned to normal.

"I went from a man that weighed 120 or 135 pounds back to 165 pounds,
which is the weight I weighed before the brain hemorrhage," said
Arcand.

After Parker's case opened up a legal way to access medical marijuana,
Arcand was sure that he would be given a licence. However, none of the
doctors or specialists were willing to fill out the necessary forms
and prescribe a dosage to enrol him in the MMAR program. They
preferred to give him a letter attesting to his condition so that he
would be able to purchase marijuana at a compassion club, a location
set up to distribute medical marijuana.

Arcand turned down the letters because compassion clubs are not part
of the federal program and because they are susceptible to raids and
other legal ramifications. In the end, he found a physician willing to
enroll him in the program in 2002. Arcand's intuition also turned out
to be right since this past summer a wide-scale raid hit the
compassion clubs of Quebec that accepted letters signed by physicians.

Compassion clubs are not legally allowed, but police normally permit
them to function as long as they remain transparent and maintain a
strict set of rules regarding membership. Many clubs enforce a daily
purchase limit for members and keep prices relatively high to prevent
the possibility of resale on the streets.

Health Canada stresses to MMAR patients that compassion clubs are
illegal and that their program is the only legal venue to fulfil their
prescriptions. Patients have the option to buy ground marijuana from
Health Canada, grow their own plants, or designate a grower that will
supply enough for their prescription.

A new world of cannabinoids

The question of how to supply himself with enough medical marijuana
led Arcand to Greenblatt and his organization in 2009. MCAS either
pairs MMAR patients with a designated grower or will teach card
holders how to supply themselves. Greenblatt, who is a designated
grower himself, immediately had Arcand try a number of cannabis
strains. After some experimentation, Arcand had the perfect mixture to
treat his condition.

Greenblatt was also surprised to see that when he became a licensed
grower, the only instructions that were provided to him by Health
Canada were on how to ship cannabis without being detected by Canada
Post. He explained that Health Canada should be teaching patients how
to become self-sufficient by growing their own plants in a safe way.

"Right now I'm happy."

Now living in Ottawa, Arcand is 42-years-old and terminally ill.
Surgeons were unable to remove all of the malformation and the scar
tissue has begun to build up in Arcand's brain. In February, the
growth, now more than five cubic centimetres in size, pushed out and
fractured his skull. Arcand uses a strain of cannabis that is
incredibly effective at reducing pain, so much so that he was able to
stop taking the morphine he was prescribed.

"The pain that I was in was so immense that I don't know what I would
have done if I had to keep on living with it. The morphine couldn't do
anything," said Arcand. "Right now I'm happy, I'm not in the kind of
pain that I was [before] medical cannabis."