SMOKE STILL HASN'T CLEARED OVER MARIJUANA PROBLEMS

What, one has to wonder, has Anne McLellan and the high-priced help at
Health Canada been smoking.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fully in favour of the fed's announcement
yesterday that it will - for the interim anyway - get into the
business of selling marijuana to sick Canadians.

What makes this look like the kind of plan put together by a stoned
pothead needing to make a snap decision -- or, well, this Liberal
government -- is that THE main group of individuals needed to make
this program a success -- doctors -- have already opted out.

The feds announced they will sell bags of marijuana seeds and
marijuana to sick patients who qualify under Ottawa's medical pot program.

The seeds would be mailed to those few Canadians -- about 500 -- lucky
enough to have received a medical exemption from the feds to grow,
possess and use marijuana for medicinal reasons.

But under this wonky plan, those too sick to grow their own marijuana
can buy dried marijuana from the feds, who will send the drug to the
sick person's doctor.

And therein lies the problem. Within hours of yesterday's
announcement, there was a snag.

The Canadian Medical Association is urging its doctors not to
distribute marijuana for the feds. The CMA gives a host of reasons,
including a lack of scientific studies proving effectiveness and
safety, as well as the risk some doctors may face if they are sued by
someone who might get sick from the marijuana.

It's more slap dash, ill-thought out, non-consultative government
policy that essentially leaves most medicinal marijuana users exactly
where they've always been -- on the wrong side of the law and on their
own.

People just like Grant Cluff, 56, who has been suffering from multiple
sclerosis for 16 years.

The former high school teacher's life became so unbearable 21/2 years
ago, that he took an overdose of the cocktail of pain-killers legally
prescribed to him and attempted to end his life. "I had given up,"
says Cluff, while his wife Eunice nods in agreement beside him.

"I saw my future ahead of me in terms of sitting in a wheelchair and
taking enormous amounts of pills every day, but still living in pain.
It even got to the point where I couldn't control my bowel and bladder
at times and the diagnosis said it was only going to get worse."

Luckily for Cluff, however, a woman down the hall who also suffers
from MS saw him being wheeled away on a stretcher and she put him in
touch with another MS sufferer and Calgary's foremost cannabis
crusader, Grant Krieger.

"Grant Krieger saved and changed my life," says Cluff, who still walks
with some difficulty and the use of a brace, but leads an active
involved life with his wife, children and grandkids.

At first, Eunice refused to allow marijuana into her
home.

"I thought only low-lifes took marijuana," she says with a chuckle.
But when she saw the changes in her husband's health, primarily
through eating cannabis butter, she changed her tune and has become a
marijuana minstrel herself -- and has even helped start up the
Canadian Medicinal Marijuana Co-op.

While Grant Cluff's quality of life has improved immensely, he is
upset he is forced to break the law.

"In order to stay out of a wheelchair and live without excruciating
pain, I have to break the law everyday," he adds as he inhales
marijuana from a hot air vaporizer.

Cluff has been unable to get one of those rare medicinal marijuana
exemptions from the feds because his own multiple sclerosis specialist
- - while acknowledging his immense improvement - refuses to sign his
forms, for fear of losing her medical liability insurance.

Tens of thousands of other Canadians are in the same boat as
Cluff.

What the feds need to do immediately is simply require that a person
have proof of a catastrophic illness, not require a physician's
endorsement of their use of marijuana.

Without that, yesterday's plan is just a lot of smoke.