NEW LAW ALLOWS FOR PHARMACIES TO FILL MARIJUANA PRESCRIPTIONS

AMSTERDAM -- Pharmacies may fill prescriptions for marijuana and patients
can get the cost covered by insurance, according to a law that went into
effect Monday.

Doctors in the famously liberal Netherlands have long recommended marijuana
to cancer patients as an appetite enhancer and to combat pain and nausea.
But it is usually bought at one of the country's 800 "coffee shops," where
the plant is sold openly while police look the other way.

"The health minister said, look, doctors are prescribing marijuana to their
patients anyway, and there are many medicinal users, so we may as well
regulate it," said Bas Kuik, a spokesman for the Dutch Ministry of Health.