MARIJUANA PLAN IS TAKING TOO LONG
Alberta
Health Minister Anne McLellan admits to being uncomfortable with the idea of people smoking marijuana to relieve pain and other conditions.
The minister, however, has little choice but to proceed. The courts have ruled that the sick have a right to take marijuana. Ottawa must either get on with setting up a system of regulated marijuana use, or give up on controlling marijuana use altogether.
Ottawa has promised a regulated system, but getting it going seems to be taking forever.
The government's first official crop, grown in an abandoned mine in Manitoba, contained too many strains of marijuana to be used in clinical trials that are key to reassuring physicians about prescribing the drug for medical conditions.
As McLellan has said, such trials must use marijuana of consistent quality so researchers know what they're measuring.
Key to the government's regulation plan is use of physicians as the gatekeepers for who will be allowed the drug. That is a role doctors rightly feel comfortable with only when there's scientific evidence on which to base their decisions.
Sufferers who do get their doctor's blessing still face the challenge of supply. Not everyone wants to grow their own plants and a government supply seems a long way off. Fortunately, there are more marijuana sources for the sick than there once were. Groups like Vancouver's Compassion Club, which supplies pot to 2,000 members, are springing up.
"We exist in the space between the way the law is written and the way the law is enforced," says
Hilary Black, founder of the Vancouver club. Yet that space can shrink at any moment. The Toronto Compassion Centre was raided by police last week.
The government must end the legal limbo by determining, once and for all, the validity of marijuana as a treatment. If the drug meets the test, it should be made available in a safe, simple way to those who are prescribed it.
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MAP posted-by: Beth
Pubdate: Wed, 21 Aug 2002
Source: Edmonton Journal (CN AB)
Copyright: 2002 The Edmonton Journal
Contact: letters@thejournal.southam.ca
Website: http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/134