GOVERNMENT'S MEDICAL MARIJUANA PLAN SHOULD MAKE US WARY

The 10th anniversary of Canada's medical marijuana program is being
celebrated with a declaration that it is an abysmal failure.

A decade ago the federal government hastily cobbled the program
together in response to an Ontario court ruling that the criminal
cannabis prohibition was unconstitutional if it didn't exempt those
who benefit from the plant's therapeutic properties.

Today, we are on the cusp of the first major revision of the program
that has frustrated and angered patients, incensed law enforcement and
made municipalities pull their hair out over thousands of
neighbourhood grow operations.

Until now, there were three legal ways to obtain medical marijuana.
With a government-issued exemption from the criminal law, a person
with a doctor's prescription could grow a certain number of plants, or
outsource the cultivation to a designated grower. They could also
purchase it from a governmentauthorized Saskatchewan company, Prairie
Plant Systems Inc. Most patients, however, because of the government
program's deficiencies, bought pot from the illegal network of
compassion clubs that have sprung up across the country.

Medicinal marijuana users will now be prohibited from growing their
own weed and will have to buy from licensed, tightly regulated
commercial producers, federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq says.

"Our government is very concerned that the current Marijuana Medical
Access Program is open to abuse and exploitation by criminal
elements," she maintained.

Aglukkaq didn't provided any details but her broad brush strokes make
me leery, and if I were running a compassion club I would be very worried.

She wants to close the dispensaries and eliminate personal grow
operations.

I doubt Ottawa has a replacement regime ready to go in spite of her
comments, in part because the best growers in the country haven't a
clue what Ottawa is doing.

And there are few companies that could meet the security and organic
farming standards necessary to begin producing a range of specific
marijuana strains to meet medical demand from a standing start.

That's not even to mention that there are numerous patients forced to
grow their own medicine who would prefer to keep doing it. That right
should be sacrosanct.

The current problems flow from the expectation of the federal
government 10 years ago that only small numbers of terminally ill
patients or those with debilitating ailments would want cannabis. Boy,
were they wrong.

[You can read the decision that prompted Ottawa to set up the program
here http: //www. canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/20 00/2000canlii5762/2000canl
ii5762.html.]

Still, the idea of offering tens of thousands of Canadians a variety
of strains of marijuana for everything from chronic pain, AIDS and
chemotherapy was never envisioned. Yet that's what the medical market
is demanding.

The Harper Government is deaf to that clamour. It wants out of the
marijuana business and to calm stormy neighbourhood concerns.

Aglukkaq says she is open for input until July 31 on how to go about
implementing her changes.

In response, those in the drug policy world are hanging on the Supreme
Court of Canada decision on Insite.

If the country's high court endorses the view that provincial health
powers trump the federal criminal law, Ottawa will face a
constitutional challenge aimed at establishing medical marijuana
programs under provincial jurisdiction.

That would be a made-in-B.C. solution, and I'm told the Liberals and
the NDP, behind the scenes, are in progressive agreement.

After all, if the doc says its OK and it helps the patient, why should
it concern the cops, the courts, the federal government or some
Neanderthal municipality like North Vancouver?

I'm all in favour of overhauling the medical marijuana program but
instead of Aglukkaq's proposals, why not have a real discussion with
the compassion clubs and create a workable plan?