LOCAL DOCTORS SAY POT FAR FROM FIRST CHOICE

Two Cowichan doctors view medical marijuana as inferior to the clinical
drugs they prescribe for their patients.

"It's my last choice but I'm sure it's one of the first choices in the
minds of some patients," said Dr. Willie Pewarchuk, who prescribed pot for
one nauseous cancer patient that requested reefers in the past six months.

"We went through all the usual things, including some derivatives of
marijuana, and eventually eliminated them.

"He preferred to take a few tokes as opposed to the medication. I guess it
worked."

However, he maintains "marijuana isn't as effective as some other things."

In fact, Pewarchuk's first line of drugs against chemotherapy-induced
nausea "would be a combination of Zofran and dexamethosone."

Cowichan District Hospital surgeon Peter Leckie is also apprehensive about
prescribing pot to patients willing to gain Health Canada permits to
possess and grow weed, or have it grown by a licenced grower. (Medical
marijuana is not dispensed at pharmacies.)

"When you can isolate an active agent and provide it in a more potent form,
usually the results are improved," he said.

Leckie also prescribes Zofran and other drugs that mimic marijuana's
anti-nausea qualities.

Both physicians have ethical concerns about the use of medical marijuana
that gained a green light from Health Canada in August 2001.

"I have feelings about the whole thing," Pewarchuk said about Ottawa's
plans to decriminalize cannabis so fines, but not criminal records, result
from simple possession.

"Should marijuana be legalized for everyone, or kept illegal with people
being charged for having it?" he asks.

Leckie -- who's never had patients request pot -- sees medical weed as
opening doors to legalizing another drug for potential abuse. "In a strict
medical situation it's reasonable," he said of prescribed pot, "but I worry
that it's the legitimization of another form of a drug and we already live
in a society affected by drugs."

However, licensed Duncan grower Eric Nash says "patients tell us every day
they're fed up with the side effects of (prescribed) drugs and marijuana
eliminates them."

Leckie's aware marijuana, and even heroin, may be a patient's treatment of
choice, but that's no reason for prescribing them. "Lots of patients have
the attitude that `I should be able to have whatever (drug) I want.'

"I'm all for patients having as wide a choice as possible but not for using
that as an argument to legalize marijuana," he said.

Nash says some prescribed drugs are also addictive, "especially the
morphine-based ones."

He and partner Wendy Little have hooked up six patients from B.C. and
Alberta with six other licenced Valley growers in the past year.

"Two of those growers are fairly high-profile business owners here," noted Nash.