WEEDING OUT BAD POLICY

Pretending that marijuana possesses magic evil qualities that make it
more dangerous than a thousand other substances our laws permit
doctors to prescribe, from Ritalin to morphine, hurts physicians and
their patients.

Nobody seems keen to help the doctors, but Deputy Judge Barry Strayer
of the Federal Court has struck a blow on behalf of the patients.
Judge Strayer is 75 and semi-retired after spending a decade as chief
justice of the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada; he's no new-age
softie. But last week he killed a Health Canada rule that practically
gave the federal government a monopoly on legal marijuana cultivation
for people whose doctors say they can use the weed for a range of
illnesses from glaucoma to the side effects of chemotherapy.

The rule was that if you're a licensed marijuana user, you could buy
your medication from the government (which has one supplier, whose
product many users say is vile), grow for yourself, or have one
person grow for you and nobody else. This last condition, which Judge
Strayer overturned, was meant to prevent the rise of entrepreneurial
"compassion clubs," which are common particularly in California,
where state laws are generous to medicinal-marijuana users.
Supposedly compassion clubs blur the line between licit and illicit
marijuana cultivation, making possible a vast underground economy in
illegal marijuana production and use. Wouldn't want that.

Yet as businesses that compete for licensed users or customers,
compassion clubs have to provide good, safe marijuana at a price
patients are willing to pay, with predictable levels of THC,
cannabis's active substance. In short, they have to act a little like
pharmaceutical companies.

If sick Canadians can get access to reliable supplies, their doctors
might overcome some of their squeamishness about prescribing
marijuana. Currently, many doctors won't do it, and many of those who
will are uncomfortable, as a series of Health Canada-sponsored
interviews with 30 pot-prescribing physicians recently found.

(The report the government released on those interviews is called
Views of Physicians Regarding the Use of Marihuana for Medical
Purposes. The government insists on calling medical cannabis
"marihuana" instead of "marijuana," as if to imply they aren't
exactly the same thing except for the paperwork.)

Doctors worry that they don't have enough clinical knowledge when
they recommend their patients use marijuana for medical reasons,
Health Canada found. Often, the patients come up with the idea.
Suffering from a problem they've heard marijuana can soothe, they
find their own sources of the drug, find it helps them, and then go
to their doctors for expert advice on how to use marijuana wisely --
advice the doctors too often don't possess. Sometimes most of what
they know comes from their patients, according to the report.

Marijuana is now in an awkward in-between state in Canada, legally
permissible for some people but still legally distasteful. Leave
aside the important questions of whether it's practical to wage war
on a plant, or whether the government should. As a matter of law and
of fact, marijuana is a regulated pharmaceutical and it should be
treated with all the seriousness that implies.