HEALTH CANADA IS FAR BEHIND

A call to Health Canada earlier this week, asking why the federal
agency is so far behind in renewing the licences of those they permit
to grow medicinal marijuana, has me scratching my head.

My call came as the result of a conversation I had with Cedar's David
Hodgkinson, who was charged with illegal cultivation after his
medicinal marijuana grow-op was raided by the RCMP last week.

Hodgkinson claims his licence to grow the pot from Health Canada
expired in August, even though he applied for the renewal eights weeks
before it expired.

The reasons for that particular raid are still not clear and the RCMP
were holding their cards close to their chests as of Tuesday. But the
official from Health Canada, who asked not to be named, made it quite
clear to me that once a licence to produce medical marijuana expires,
there's no grace period and growers are operating illegally if they
don't shut down their operations immediately.

She said the rules still apply, even though Health Canada acknowledges
that a "sharp rise" in applications to grow medicinal marijuana has
led to a backlog in processing new applications and renewing old ones.

My suggestion that Health Canada appears to be allowing people who
have taken the time to follow the rules around growing medicinal pot
to face criminal prosecution due to the inadequacies and bureaucracy
of her agency seemed to fall on deaf ears.

All I got was a typical bureaucratic response that Health Canada was
"working hard to improve its efficiencies."

No matter what people's views are on marijuana, whether the
controversial herb is the devil's weed that should be banished from
the face of the planet or that it's nature's miracle cure, there's no
denying that Health Canada is slipping up on this issue.

After all, medical authorities and even the federal government (at
least Paul Martin's government) has acknowledged marijuana has medical
benefits for those suffering with such chronic conditions as AIDS,
hepatitis, ALS and cancer and allow doctors to prescribe it.

Ottawa awarded a contract to Prairie Plant Systems to cultivate
medical marijuana in 2000 in Flin Flon, Man., to supply those who have
permission to use the drug. But those who were looking to the
operation with high hopes to help deal with their medical conditions
legally ended up facing long waits if their pot arrived at all, and
many claimed the pot they received from Flin Flon was too weak to help
them.

That's why Health Canada decided to allow people with medical
conditions that can be helped by pot to apply to grow their own,
albeit under very tight conditions and restrictions.

I suspect the new and negligent attitude towards medicinal pot by the
federal government is a reflection of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's
views on the herb.

After all, it was his government that recently introduced legislation
to implement mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana.