DRUGS: MARIJUANA STRENGTH A SMOKE SCREEN

Dear Editor,

Recently Health Canada has been claiming that the cannabis produced for
medical uses by Prairie Plant Systems has so many strains that it is
unusable, but they will not deny that a blend of the strains that could be
delivered to patients would meet the 6% THC standard that is stipulated in
their contract with PPS.

There is no evidence that the cannabis they have is weak, only that it is
varied, which would actually guarantee that any patient receiving a blend
receives other medically tested and effective cannabinoids (like CBD:
cannabidiol) at consistent levels, something that cannot be said of many
pure strains.

While this spurious and demonstrably hollow excuse for shelving the
court-mandated compassionate use program is being used on a gullible media
in Canada, a study in the US has just found that the NIDA-supplied cannabis
strain used in the US is so weak patients wont smoke it, and some
researchers say a stronger strain is needed for any valid scientific
testing. This is the same strain that Health Canada claims they needed to
obtain seeds from to produce a standardized, high-potency crop in Canada.

Does anything Health Canada says on the issue make any sense at all, or are
they just making up excuses as they go along for politically-motivated
decisions that fly in the face of superior court decisions?

Something stinks at Health Canada when it comes to the court-mandated
cannabis medical access program, and I hope that further attention is
focused on this issue for the sake of the tens of thousands of medical
patients in this country who are otherwise forced to take opiate-based
prescription pills every day that are commonly called "junk" on the street,
and with good reason, considering the side effects.

Chris Donald

Dartmouth, NS