IS THERE A FUTURE FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA?

Users Fear New Laws Could Mean the End of Legal Pot

Eighteen-year-old Adam Greenblatt was lying in bed one morning when
his mother burst into his room and demanded to know if he had any drugs.

Greenblatt, who had been busted for possession while smoking up with
some friends outside his high school in suburban Toronto, thought his
mom was hassling him about pot again.

But this time was different. Adam's father wanted to give marijuana a
try, his mother said. Get out your dope, she told him.

Michael Greenblatt, a dentist, had suffered from multiple sclerosis
since his late 30s. The neurological condition left him with a twisted
arm and unable to practise dentistry.

After 20 years of taking toxic pharmaceuticals that were getting less
effective at controlling his spasms and nausea, he was desperate for
relief.

"I was in so much pain I had to try something else," he
recalls.

He had never tried pot, even in high school or university in the
1960s, and didn't want to start by smoking. Adam sauteed some cannabis
in butter for him and smeared it on a sandwich.

Later that day, Adam's mom called him on his cellphone and told him to
come home. "Your father wants the joint," she told him.

Sitting around the kitchen table, Adam showed his father how to smoke
and inhale marijuana.

"It was remarkable," Adam says. "It was probably the first time ever
I'd seen my dad smile and be pain free."

Today, Michael Greenblatt is one of more than 5,000 authorized
marijuana users in Canada. His son is his designated grower, providing
him with about 10 grams a day in edible form.

For Adam, the profound effect the cannabis had on his father's
symptoms was eye-opening. He went on to run as a candidate for the
Marijuana Party and work in a Montreal "compassion club," clinics that
operate in a legal grey zone by providing marijuana to sick people
outside the Health Canada program.

Greenblatt left the clinic shortly before it was raided by
police.

He now runs his own medical marijuana dispensary in Montreal to help
other patients and advocates through the Canadian Association of
Medical Cannabis Dispensaries.

Greenblatt sells medical cannabis products to about 65 customers, both
by drop-in and mail order.

Today, with the Conservative government bringing in new regulations
governing the use of medical marijuana, the future of operations like
Greenblatt's is uncertain.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq says the changes to the Marijuana
Medical Access Regulations (MMAR) are intended to balance the needs of
patients with concerns that home-grow operations are dangerous to
health and safety.

"We have heard complaints and concerns from many fire departments and
many mayors," she said.

Aglukkaq says she is also concerned about reports of criminal activity
within the medical marijuana program.

"There are people out there who are abusing this program,
unfortunately, for illegal activities," she said. "You see that on the
news on a regular basis - houses in a very nice neighbourhood being
used to grow marijuana."

But Aglukkaq insists there is no link between changes to the medical
marijuana program and the Tories omnibus crime legislation, which was
passed this week in the House of Commons and also casts a shadow on
the program's future.

The toughening of drug trafficking laws means that anyone caught
sharing or selling marijuana will face mandatory jail sentences.

No longer will judges have the discretion to waive a sentence for pot
providers who, like Greenblatt and his growers, offer the product to
help the sick.

If charged and convicted of trafficking, they will do jail time - at
least six months.

Libby Davies, the NDP health critic, wonders if the government's
proposed changes to the regulations aren't rooted in a deeper
suspicion about marijuana.

She notes that the previous Liberal government only began authorizing
medical marijuana use under the force of a court decision.

"One has to be skeptical about their reasons," she said. "I know they
don't like this program. My fear is they will unload it because they
don't want to deal with it politically."

Health Canada is currently conducting consultations with stakeholders
on the proposed changes to the regulations.

If the new rules are adopted, no longer will patients be able to
legally grow pot at home or have someone grow it for them.

Under the current system, approved patients can produce their own
marijuana plants or designate a person they know to grow it for them.

Data obtained by the Ottawa Citizen through the Access to Information
Act shows that, between 2001 and 2007, about 55 per cent of approved
MMAR patients were licensed to grow and another nine per cent could
use designated growers.

For these patients, the incentive to grow is both one of cost - done
properly it can be cheaper than the $5 plus taxes per gram for Health
Canada's pot - and of quality. Many complain that Health Canada's
contracted producer, Prairie Plant Systems in Manitoba, produces only
one strain of cannabis and it has a lower content of active
ingredients. Different strains of cannabis are better for treating
different diseases, activists contend.

Under the proposed regulations, Health Canada would license private
growers to provide marijuana products by mail-order to approved patients.

The prohibition on growing is just one in a basket of changes that
Health Canada has suggested making to the medical marijuana program as
it moves into its second decade.

The regulations would also relieve Health Canada bureaucrats of the
responsibility for approving applications that have already been
signed off by doctors. The two-step process of asking a doctor before
applying to the MMAR program would end and doctors alone would decide
whether to issue the licence.

Marijuana advocates are generally supportive of this change, but warn
it will do nothing to overcome the major obstacle for patients: few
doctors are agreeing to sign the papers because the Canadian Medical
Association (CMA) does not support the program.

Patients still must doctor shop to find a marijuana friendly
physician, with some even paying $400 or more to visit clinics
specializing in medical marijuana referrals.

Others go to compassion clubs if there are any nearby, or instead buy
marijuana illegally on the street.

Aglukkaq says solving this problem will require better research and
more consultations with the CMA and provincial health ministries.

That's not good enough for Francois Arcand, an Ottawa medicinal
marijuana patient who is frustrated by the CMA's reticence to let
doctors prescribe the drug.

"It's a medication that has so much potential but it's marijuana, so
it's 'shhhhh'," he says.

Arcand was studying civil law at the University of Ottawa in 1989 when
he was struck by a brain hemorrhage. Doctors told him he had a
pear-sized arterial venous malformation in his head.

After surgery, he was left with little feeling on one side of his body
and suffered from near-constant seizures.

Pharmaceutical drugs reduced the number of seizures but sapped his
appetite and left him in a mental fog.

His weight loss and physical decline was so obvious that some people
asked him if he had AIDS.

Sick of watching him waste away, Arcand's brother bought some
marijuana for him. The drug was transformative.

But Arcand couldn't get his doctor to agree to enrol him in the Health
Canada program.

"I was told, 'Nope, the CMA does not allow us to give it.'"

Instead, he began buying it illegally. "I knew a guy who knew a guy,"
he says.

Having to resort to a criminal activity did not sit well with someone
who had once planned on becoming a Crown prosecutor.

It took him seven years to find a vascular neurologist who would agree
to sign the Health Canada forms.

Now he consumes his cannabis in the form of a tincture, with the pot
supplied by Greenblatt's girlfriend, his designated grower.

"I blame the CMA. They're the ones who tell their doctors you don't
have a right to give a prescription," Arcand says.

"There's so many people this could help without the stigma of getting
high all the time."