CATCH 22: MEDICAL POT LEGAL BUT NOT AVAILABLE

If all you do is scan the headlines when you read the newspaper or get your
news from television sound bites, it would be tempting to think that Canada
has solved the problem of medicinal marijuana.

It made headlines a couple of years back when the Chretien government
finally gave in to pressure from many directions and created the Office of
Cannabis Medical Access, ostensibly to give access to those in dire need of
legal marijuana.

Indeed, the government went a step further and started growing its own stone
in an abandoned mine shaft in Manitoba.

(Never mind the typical government inefficiency of setting up shop in
Manitoba when the best dope in the world is already being grown in the
basements and attics of B.C.)

The move was fodder for many a stand-up comic and political cartoonist but
it seemed to show the government was serious about providing pot to people
suffering from a variety of illnesses, some of them terminal.

Problem solved, or so it seemed. Then the feds seemed to contract cold feet
last fall when it did an abrupt about face.

No longer was the Manitoban home grown going to find its way to sick people.
It had been for research purposes all along and was not meant for public
consumption.

But the genie was already out of the bottle with hundreds of Canadians
already given their section 56 exemption allowing them to possess marijuana
for medical use.

Unfortunately, the federal government has proven to be the least of their
worries for, in typical high-handed fashion, the feds while changing the law
seemed to have forgotten to consider all the other jurisdictions and
governing bodies that might have be involved.

Pharmacists won't touch pot because it's a controlled substance. Welfare
won't pay for it for the same reason. Word is that doctors across Canada
have recently been told to not fill our prescriptions for medical marijuana
because of the legal limbo it seems to be mired in.

Meanwhile, people who could benefit from the proven medicinal qualities of
marijuana are left to deal with the black market to fill their own
prescriptions.

It's hard to miss the irony in the fact that many legal drugs are abused
while a so-called recreational drug can be used to help sick people.

Pot has been used for many years by people in medical crisis and that's not
going to change.

Like people who fly to exotic countries seeking desperate cures for cancer,
those in need will find their weed.

It's just a shame that the government can't finish what it started and clear
the decks for the legal--and simple--procurement of medical marijuana.