USER'S GUIDE EN ROUTE FOR POT SMOKERS

OTTAWA -- Health Canada is set to release a user's manual this week
for a drug it has long opposed: Marijuana.

The unprecedented move has been triggered by the courts, which
compelled Health Canada this month to begin distributing
government-certified marijuana to a group of patients who take the
substance to alleviate symptoms.

The department must also release a manual on how to use its dope --
but a daft version of the document shows patients will get little
practical advice about ingesting marijuana and lots of warnings
against using it at all.

"Administration by smoking is not recommended," says the 59-page
document, which is modelled on drug product monographs, standard for
approved medicines.

"Marijuana can produce physical and psychological dependence and has
the potential for abuse."

The March 30 draft document, obtained under the Access to Information
Act, warns that smoking marijuana can be more dangerous to the lungs
than tobacco, but provides patients no practical alternatives.

"We're not recommending, in fact, that marijuana be used," Suzanne
Desjardins, a Health Canada scientist who helped produce the manual,
said in an interview from Ottawa.

"It's a drug we don't recommend. If people want to use it, then we're
saying, well, don't use it by smoking it ... There's no study that
demonstrates (in) what form it should be used."

Experienced, health-conscious users have long turned to tinctures and
vaporizers as alternatives to smoking dope, which delivers the main
active ingredient, THC, quickly but can harm the lungs.