Canna-da changes policy……

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Government’s medical-marijuana plan should make us wary

6/26 Vancouversun.com

According to the SEC, USA owns Canada…..how long until the Cannabis NWO is here?-UA

The 10th anniversary of Canada’s medical marijuana program is being celebrated with a declaration that it is an abysmal failure.

A decade ago the federal government hastily cobbled the program together in response to an Ontario court ruling that the criminal cannabis prohibition was unconstitutional if it didn’t exempt those who benefit from the plant’s therapeutic properties.

Today, we are on the cusp of the first major revision of the program that has frustrated and angered patients, incensed law enforcement and made municipalities pull their hair out over thousands of neighbourhood grow operations.

Until now, there were three legal ways to obtain medical marijuana. With a government-issued exemption from the criminal law, a person with a doctor’s prescription could grow a certain number of plants, or outsource the cultivation to a designated grower. They could also purchase it from a government-authorized Saskatchewan company, Prairie Plant Systems Inc. Most patients, however, because of the government program’s deficiencies, bought pot from the illegal network of compassion clubs that have sprung up across the country.

Medicinal marijuana users will now be prohibited from growing their own weed and will have to buy from licensed, tightly regulated commercial producers, federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq says.

“Our government is very concerned that the current Marijuana Medical Access Program is open to abuse and exploitation by criminal elements,” she maintained.

Aglukkaq didn’t provided any details but her broad brush strokes make me leery, and if I were running a compassion club I would be very worried.

She wants to close the dispensaries and eliminate personal grow operations.

I doubt Ottawa has a replacement regime ready to go in spite of her comments, in part because the best growers in the country haven’t a clue what Ottawa is doing.

And there are few companies that could meet the security and organic farming standards necessary to begin producing a range of specific marijuana strains to meet medical demand from a standing start.

That’s not even to mention that there are numerous patients forced to grow their own medicine who would prefer to keep doing it. That right should be sacrosanct.

The current problems flow from the expectation of the federal government 10 years ago that only small numbers of terminally ill patients or those with debilitating ailments would want cannabis. Boy, were they wrong.

[You can read the decision that prompted Ottawa to set up the program here https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2000/2000canlii5762/2000canlii5762.html.]

Still, the idea of offering tens of thousands of Canadians a variety of strains of marijuana for everything from chronic pain, AIDS and chemotherapy was never envisioned. Yet that’s what the medical market is demanding.

The Harper Government is deaf to that clamour. It wants out of the marijuana business and to calm stormy neighbourhood concerns.

Aglukkaq says she is open for input until July 31 on how to go about implementing her changes.

In response, those in the drug policy world are hanging on the Supreme Court of Canada decision on Insite.

If the country’s high court endorses the view that provincial health powers trump the federal criminal law, Ottawa will face a constitutional challenge aimed at establishing medical marijuana programs under provincial jurisdiction.

That would be a made-in-B.C. solution, and I’m told the Liberals and the NDP, behind the scenes, are in progressive agreement.

After all, if the doc says its OK and it helps the patient, why should it concern the cops, the courts, the federal government or some Neanderthal municipality like North Vancouver?

I’m all in favour of overhauling the medical marijuana program but instead of Aglukkaq’s proposals, why not have a real discussion with the compassion clubs and create a workable plan?

1 COMMENT

  1. I feel I’ve been slandered by the comments stating I am causing dificulties. I believe the Frazer Valley produces tons of wine that have a serious effect on the native communities. Not only in the native communities but many others from liver cancer or auto fatalities, birth defects, a large cost to the medical accounts. Tobacoe is another one with all kinds of substancial data that are being suplied by ellegal trade of a seriously tanted legal product. Lets ask her when is she going to do her real job. When will she invest in the studies of what is realy working in pot.
    Her actions is painting us with a real dirty brush and justice should be taken.

  2. I feel it’s time to bring out the facts on health care numbers and where she should be applying her attention and what in the health industry is she ignoring and all the factual data in alcohol, tobacoe, airpolutions, prescription drugs. And also the factual numbers of the last 40 years of pot. She cares about nobody but her own face by attacking a handicapped society what next will she try to inflict into our health industry. What about health concerns of the next generation housed in the rodent/cockroach infested housing. These people are forced to take anti D drugs so they can handle living in the inviroments. And not one thing is being done to enforce proper maintenance. It’s time to speak up. This is accross Canada this is federal.

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