REGRET FOR RESIGNATIONS

Feds Forge Ahead With Marijuana Plans

Federal Health Minister Anne McLellan says she "regrets" two high-profile
resignations from Health Canada's medicinal marijuana program.

But the federal government will forge ahead with what could be the most
comprehensive medical-marijuana research in the world, McLellan said yesterday.

"I accept the fact that this is a difficult issue for some people and we
will just move forward," McLellan told The Sun.

"We will continue to push ahead with the research and the clinical trials
. and we will share the results, not only obviously with Canadians but I
think globally. The clinical trials we'll do will probably end up being
some of the largest ever done anywhere."

The director of the Office of Medical Access, Cindy Cripps-Prawak, left her
job last week, two days after the department introduced a plan to
distribute medical marijuana through doctors' offices. A government
spokesman has said Cripps-Prawak's departure was planned months ago.

The interim distribution plan responded to an Ontario court ruling that
patients had to be given some legal way to obtain the drug and has been
criticized by doctors and patients.

The Canadian Medical Association has urged doctors not to participate.

And McLellan said she has her own worries about Health Canada supplying pot
to patients.

"My concern, as the minister of health, is if in fact you have a program on
the basis of medicinal benefit, you have to prove the medicinal benefit,
and that's why we have to do the research on the clinical trials, as we
would expect with any other drug, product or therapy."

Cripps-Prawak's is the second recent resignation, after Dr. Greg Robinson -
an AIDS patient - left Health Canada's advisory committee because of what
he described as inconsistencies in the access program.

Robinson has said he was upset McLellan terminated a study by the Community
Research Initiative of Toronto (CRIT) into the use of cannabis as an
appetite stimulant.

CRIT had spent about $800,000 of a $2-million grant before its funding was
stopped in March, just as it was about to begin clinical trials.