PARANOID ON POT

Eleven years ago next month, Alberta Court of Queen's Bench Justice
Darlene Acton handed down a landmark ruling that gave Calgary multiple
sclerosis sufferer Grant Krieger the right to grow and cultivate
marijuana. She noted the absurdity in the federal law of the day that
gave ill Canadians suffering from severe illness the right to possess
marijuana but no legal outlet in which to buy it.

A year later, the federal government made it possible for sick
Canadians to buy medicinal marijuana through legal means. Yet, to this
day, it remains almost impossible to find a physician who will
prescribe it.

Proposed changes on how Health Canada regulates access to the pot
could make matters even worse for medicinal marijuana users. Rather
than serving as the ultimate arbiter in approving or rejecting
applications, the federal department would download the responsibility
on doctors, who are justifiably reluctant to do so for ethical and
legal reasons.

Although the Canadian Medical Association code of ethics requires
doctors to "consider first the well-being of the patient," it also
demands that they take "all reasonable steps to prevent harm" - the
modern interpretation of the classic "do-no-harm" principle of the
ancient Hippocratic oath. Yet, research by Health Canada on the safety
and efficacy of medicinal marijuana was terminated by the Harper
Conservatives in 2006, which, among other things, could have answered
basic questions such as appropriate dosages.

The government believes clinical research is best undertaken by the
private sector, but critics say pharmaceutical companies have no
monetary interest in doing so, and that research agencies refuse to
touch it because smoking cannabis is seen as an unsafe method of
delivery. Critics fear the government wants out because the issue
doesn't square with its tough-on-crime agenda.

Asking doctors to sign off on a drug that has not gone through the
normal regulatory review process also places them at legal risk.

The inability of the government to adequately deal with the issue has
created a perverse system that makes medicinal marijuana legal only in
name. The federal government effectively wants doctors to prescribe an
unregulated drug that can be dangerous to those with psychosis,
schizophrenia and heart disease. It places doctors in an untenable
quandary.

The proposed changes to the program include removing the rights of
patients to grow their own supply of marijuana or to appoint
designated growers, forcing users to get their pot from a licensed
commercial producer instead. Ostensibly, this is to make the program
less complicated for seriously ill Canadians.

The only way this could work would be to give some form of legislated
protection for doctors, yet that still wouldn't solve their ethical
issues, and it would expose them to users who simply want pot for
recreational use.

Doctors shouldn't be the gatekeepers for the government's ineptitude.
it's not fair to them or the more than 12,000 Canadians authorized to
possess medical marijuana, for whom the process is more cloudy than
ever.