DON'T GET TOO HIGH ON POT RULING

Internal audit reveals feds banking on legal limbo to obstruct medpot reforms.

The feds' backward pot laws have been smoked out yet again - this
time by a court decision two weeks ago declaring weed possession laws
unconstitutional.

This after a Toronto man busted with $45 of bud argued that the
country's medical marijuana regulations are flawed. But don't expect
the decision to make getting medical pot any easier.

The ongoing legal confusion surrounding our pot laws is what's making
our Medical Marihuana Access Program look like it's being
administered by the Trailer Park Boys.

A recently completed internal audit by Health Canada suggests no
long-term vision has ever been set out for the program, because pot
laws have languished in a legal limbo since they were first struck
down in 2003.

The audit makes particular note of a 2003 meeting at which then
health minister Anne McLellan essentially instructed staff to
obstruct the processing of Canadians seeking access to medpot. It was
at that meeting that a directive was issued for MMAP staff to strive
for the constitutional minimum when it comes to administering the
federal pot program.

The audit also reveals that the department still doesn't have a
mission statement and just recently developed standard operating procedures.

But the audit defends the decision not to adopt a long-term vision
for the program by stating, "For reasons such as the complexity and
rapid change of the issues impacting the program, it was not
practical to further delineate performance targets."

HC spokesperson Renee Bergeron responds in an e-mail that "Health
Canada's long-term vision involves the program acquiring, where
possible, the features of a traditional health care model, including
the phase-out of personal cultivation, distribution of marihuana to
authorized persons through pharmacies, keeping abreast of the risks
and benefits of marihuana and the sharing of such information with
patients and their physicians."

One of the problems HC is having, Bergeron writes, "is limited
information from other countries' experiences."

HC may want to take a look at Oregon's Medical Marijuana Program
(OMMP). Conceived at the same time as Canada's, the Oregon program
has registered 12,000-plus users and more than 2,500 physicians. By
comparison, HC has registered 1,741 Canadians and 1,028 doctors nationwide.

Since the UN has declared Canada the cannabis champion of the world,
isn't it high time we started acting like champs, not chumps?