MEDICINAL POT TOO HARD TO GET

It's time to stop blowing smoke over medical marijuana. A compassion
club now operating downtown supplies patients with pot in some kind of
quasi-legal grey area.

This government takes a dim view of drug use and it creates a climate
within Health Canada whereby sick people who need it are having
trouble getting it.

Many doctors are afraid to prescribe it. I learned this myself during
a recent serious illness.

Canada has certainly made headway moving away from cannabis
criminalization in recent years, but it looks like the pendulum will
soon swing further toward restricting its use.

Some will doubt marijuana's value as a therapeutic drug, but the
plant's medical uses have been known for ages.

Two years ago I was stricken with vasculitis, a rare, often painful
and sometimes life-threatening immunological condition. First, I took
over-the-counter pills, then codeine. But I wanted to stay off this
addictive drug. My doctor wouldn't sign a medical cannabis licence
application.

Instead, I was given a prescription for Nabilone, a pharmaceutical
form of the drug, which took care of my pain and the nausea of
another drug that controls the vasculitis. But there are problems
with Nabilone: The drug lasts 12 hours, so each time I took it I'd
get so zonked out I couldn't drive for an entire day.

I understand it's a common complaint for those with diseases like
multiple sclerosis, cancer and HIV/AIDS. Many prefer the manageable
effects of smoking pot over pharmaceuticals.

Smoking is harmful, but new vaporizers are said to greatly reduce that
harm. Users can smoke what they want, when they want. Others bake it
in foods or make a tincture.

The folks at Mid-Island Compassion Society say many of their patients
don't like the quality of Health Canada's pot and find the rules
restrictive.

When Health Canada first regulated medical marijuana, the applications
took a few days to be processed. Now a patient can wait a month or
longer.

With a Conservative majority, promises of more prisons could
materialize.

Those who advocate for complete legalization of marijuana say it is
safer than alcohol, which causes considerable social harm and crime.
Cannabis is often linked to crime, too, but advocates says it's
because it is illegal that gangsters can make huge amounts of money.
Last week, a Maple Ridge medical-marijuana grower, licensed for 220
plants, was charged with having 1,500. Similar allegations arose last
month in Nova Scotia.

One thing is clear: The current situation makes a small number of
powerful gangsters even more rich and powerful, fuelling the
Conservatives' argument for more, bigger jails.