MARIJUANA ACCESS TOUGH

Last year the Ontario courts declared marijuana laws unconstitutional
because they did not allow access to medical marijuana. The government was
given one year to come up with new rules.

The interim rules allowed patients to grow a stash with a note from a doctor.

The new rules require, unlike morphine or Demerol, two doctors' signatures,
at a time when officials of the B.C. Medical Association argue that no
doctors should sign them because of a lack of expertise in dosage requirements.

This, for a plant where there has been no overdose in history.

So what we have now is about 300 exemptees who under the interim rules
qualified, and under the new rules can not find the first or a second
signature.

The Canadian government has made getting an exemption more difficult, for
the interim exemptees and all new applicants. The government has clearly
disobeyed the orders of the Ontario court -- and this law may well be dead.

Chuck Beyer

Victoria