PLEAS NOT HEARD, POT USERS SAY

When the 55-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis asked her doctor
to sign her Health Canada declaration for medical marijuana, the
neurologist put her hands over her ears. "La, la, la, la," she sang,
"I can't hear you."

As a result, the woman is left to hide her illegal use of pot to
control her pain, which she says on most days ranks nine on a scale
of 10. If she's out shopping and a major pain attack hits, she says
she'll drive her wheelchair to the alley behind the mall, and smoke
behind a trash bin.

A man in his 60s with Lyme disease struggles just to breathe and
move. Before he started using marijuana, he sometimes slept 20 hours
a day. He says marijuana works "like a miracle." It allows him to
function. But his doctor refuses to sign his declaration, forcing him
to buy it off the black market. He says he lives daily with the fear
of being caught.

These people were among nearly two dozen patient witnesses whose
evidence was used in an Ontario Superior Court case this year in
which Canada's medicinal marijuana access program was ruled
constitutionally invalid -- a ruling Ottawa is appealing.

Justice Donald Taliano said the regulations are so profoundly flawed
that legal access to marijuana is "practically unattainable for those
who desperately need it." Twenty three patients from Vancouver to
Charlottetown, who served as witnesses in court, were collectively
denied by 113 doctors.

Every one of them suffers from serious, debilitating and painful
conditions. All have been prescribed opioids by their doctors, but
the drugs either don't work or cause intolerable side effects. All
had asked for help getting a licence to use marijuana. Most of the
doctors refused.

Their affidavits have been sealed to protect their personal
information. But in a copy of the ruling, in which the patient
witnesses are identified by initials only, Taliano describes people
with bodies ravaged by MS, arthritis, trauma, cancer, Crohn's,
degenerative-disc disease and other conditions so painful some people
have difficulty putting one foot in front of the other: A 55-yearold
woman who suffered injuries to her spine when she was struck by a
drunk driver, a man from Prince George, B.C., who suffers
debilitating back and shoulder pain and who has to travel 950
kilometres to a compassion club in Vancouver to get marijuana, a
woman from Lethbridge, Alta., who suffers from inflammatory arthritis
and chronic vertigo attacks that can last three days.

Unlike the 29 drugs she's been prescribed by doctors, marijuana helps
lessen the attacks without the "zombie"-like side effects of
prescription drugs. Yet 26 doctors have refused her request for
medicinal marijuana.

Nearly 50 doctors have denied Dave Douglas.

The Vancouver man accidentally drank bleach when he was four years
old, severely damaging his stomach. He uses marijuana to ease the
intense nausea and cramping that's impossible to get under control if
it starts up, as well as epilepsy. He doesn't smoke marijuana. He
uses a vaporizing device, or he eats it or drinks it in tea.

In an interview, he said he's heard "every excuse in the book" for
doctors refusing to sign his declaration. There's no medical evidence
cannabis works for your condition, he said he's been told, "or my
licensing body or my local health authority refuses to allow me to
sign the paper work. It's just insane."

He said he's nearly $10,000 in debt from buying drugs on the street.
His credit cards are maxed out; his health is getting worse. "And I
still don't have access to the medication."

"I trusted doctors to have my health in mind over anything else. They
seem to be more worried about the political and legal ramifications
of me having cannabis than actually feeling better."

In Montreal's West Island, a 70-year-old woman reaches for her pipe
when the pain becomes unbearable -- when it feels as though her bones
are crumbling and splintering with every step or as if her back might
split into two. She takes two to three puffs at a time; the drug
relaxes her muscles and the brutal spasms of pain from her
osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia.

"The pain is all over my body, completely, from my neck down to my toes."

Her entire body hurts. She's been using cannabis, legally, for six
years, one ounce a month, but she said she still fears one day losing
access to the only thing that helps. "If I couldn't take the
cannabis, it would be like, I don't want to live," she says. "It
would be too much."

But the Canadian Medical Association says that would put unfair
pressure on doctors, making them gatekeepers to a largely untested
and unregulated substance they know little to nothing about.

The association points out that the drug hasn't gone through the
normal regulatory review process, and that licensing bodies have told
doctors anyone choosing to sign a medical declaration under the
current regulations should proceed with caution.

Some doctors apparently fear being met by a wave of would-be patients
seeking pot for recreational purposes, not pain relief.

Frank Fodor suffers from skin pain and deep bone pain, especially in
his legs. It's a constant, body-wide sensation that used to leave him
curled up in a ball of agony.

The 58-year-old from Cranbrook, B.C., was diagnosed with chronic
progressive multiple sclerosis in 1988. He tried 23 different
medications for his symptoms. None helped. What they did do was cause
digestive problems, flu-like symptoms and muscle spasms that "nearly
took me out."

In October 2002, his neurologist signed his declaration supporting a
medicinal marijuana licence to use eight grams a day. Fodor started
doing whole plant therapy -- putting leaves in baked goods, desserts
and fruit preserves. He went from using a walker and wheelchair to
riding a bicycle. "I was pretty well able to eliminate all my pain."

But then his neurologist sold his practice. The new doctor refused to
sign Fodor's declaration. His GP refused to sign, too. Fodor said he
was told that if the clinic doctors were to start signing
declarations, there would be a line up at the door. January 2007 was
his last month of legal use of medicinal marijuana.

Today he gets cannabis from a compassion club in Nelson, B.C.

He's down to one or two grams, mainly because it's illegal now, "but
I figure, at my age, what are they going to do to me?" The deep bone
pain wakes him in the middle of the night. Doctors "would rather see
you die than using alternative medicines, as far as I'm concerned," he says.

Keith Fagin has been consuming cannabis for 40 years for pain. The
Calgary man, who is active in the medicinal marijuana movement, has
helped people get a Health Canada exemption, but he refuses to apply
for one himself," because it is unconstitutional."

Fagin has suffered from constant, unrelenting pain in his left hip
since he was hit by a car when he was seven years old. Then, in 1991,
he was struck by a forklift in an industrial accident. The impact
smashed his left arm and aggravated his hip. He lives with a constant
painful burning, tingling sensation and numbness in the arm. He uses
marijuana for his pain, tumble drying buds to knock the trichomes
off. Trichomes contain tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active
ingredient in cannabis.

Fagin puts it in capsules that he swallows. He sometimes uses a
vaporizer. It doesn't kill the pain, but it reduces it. He's still up
and down throughout the night, because of the pain, he says.

Fagin says even people with legal access to medicinal marijuana hide
their use because of the stigma. "If you try to consume your cannabis
in public, you're frowned upon. You're a dirty old hippie. All that
reefer-madness nonsense comes into play.

"I know a number of people who won't tell family or friends they have
an exemption, because they're fearful," he says.

In his judgment, Taliano said doctors are being asked to endorse a
largely untested and unapproved drug, without the safeguards that
would be provided in a clinical trial, for example. He said no steps
were taken by the government to get doctors to buy into the program
before the regulations were implemented.

But it is the "ill-conceived legislation itself" not doctors, he
said, that has led to an oppressive situation, where marijuana is
denied to those who need it "and are otherwise entitled to have it."