cannabisnews.com: Not Above The Law





Not Above The Law
Posted by CN Staff on August 09, 2004 at 07:32:55 PT
Editorial 
Source: Ottawa Citizen 
A marijuana grow-op in Smiths Falls has done all Canadians a favour by focusing a bright light on the federal government's flagrant violation of the rule of law in its handling of medical marijuana.Last week, police raided Carasel Harvest Supply Corp., which operates in an old Canadian Tire building, after they learned (through media reports) that the company had started growing marijuana even though Health Canada hadn't given the company a licence yet.
Health Canada's refusal to give a licence to Carasel is now being challenged in the courts as an "unconstitutional barrier" to medicinal marijuana users. Right now, the health ministry will let an eligible sick person grow marijuana, and it will let that person designate someone else to grow marijuana on his or her behalf, but it won't let more than one user designate the same other person to do the growing. That means the only legal multiple-client grower is the government's single source in Flin Flon, whose product many users dismiss as ditchweed.This policy is more than addled: it's unconstitutional. Last fall, the Ontario Court of Appeal struck down three Health Canada rules on marijuana-growing, including the no-multiple-customers one, on the grounds that they effectively forced many users to buy their medicine from drug dealers -- what the government called "unlicensed suppliers."The rules, the court's three judges wrote, "create an alliance between the Government and the black market whereby the Government authorizes possession of marijuana for medical purposes and the black market supplies the necessary product." Snipped: Complete Article: http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/above.htmSource: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON) Published: Monday, August 09, 2004Copyright: 2004 The Ottawa CitizenContact: letters thecitizen.canwest.comWebsite: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Related Articles & Web Site:Cannabis News Canadian Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htmMedical Users Spurning New Batch of Marijuanahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19171.shtmlCanada Patients Get Government Marijuana http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17161.shtml
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Comment #5 posted by afterburner on August 13, 2004 at 08:21:45 PT
Canadian pot possession laws still invalid? 
Canadian pot possession laws still invalid? 
by Reverend Damuzi (11 Aug, 2004) Exciting new med-pot challenge reveals flaws in law http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/3559.html 
Excerpt: ' Because of the government's history of bad faith, Alan Young plans to be a witness in the case rather than an attorney. 
' "I have the right issue, the right litigants, but I knew I wasn't going to do the case for a number of reasons," Young told Cannabis Culture. "Primarily I want to provide evidence of Health Canada's obstructionist approach, and because I've been doing this work pretty much from the beginning, the evidence mostly comes from me. [Compassion Centre lawyer] Ron Marzel is willing to work on this as attorney." '
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Comment #4 posted by FoM on August 12, 2004 at 10:02:40 PT
News Article from The Regina Leader-Post
Hemp Owner Fuming Over Snub: http://www.canada.com/regina/leaderpost/news/story.html?id=824ea27c-7b21-4bf4-acb9-4489e9ce6e69
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on August 12, 2004 at 09:54:19 PT
News Article from The Toronto Sun
A Dopey Scheme Gone To Pot: http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/News/2004/08/12/578584.html
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Comment #2 posted by Alias on August 10, 2004 at 21:17:07 PT:
Designated growers [plural]
"but it won't let more than one user designate the same other person to do the growing."We need it so that a person can designate multiple growers too. What if you want to try a new strain, a good neuroprotetive say, that some smart grower has been working on. Best be able to buy from him. 
Disabled Ideas
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on August 10, 2004 at 16:40:16 PT
News Article from The Canadian Press
Unexpected Results: Pot-Like Drugs Given Epileptic Lab Rats Worsened Seizures Tuesday, August 10, 2004 TORONTO (CP) - Some people who use marijuana to try to control their epilepsy could actually risk making their seizures worse - if research showing the drug's effects on laboratory rats is any indication. 
Scientists at the University of Saskatchewan have found that although a synthetic version of pot's active ingredient can suppress grand-mal seizures in lab rats, in some cases it may intensify the most common cause of convulsions, those which originate in the front of the brain. Some people who can't tolerate the side-effects associated with standard medications to treat epilepsy - from headaches and nausea to drowsiness and cognitive dysfunction - turn to marijuana or synthetic forms of the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, THC, to reduce the severity of seizures. While previous studies had identified no adverse effects, new research led by Dr. Michael Corcoran at the University of Saskatchewan unexpectedly found that the pot compound can actually cause seizures in laboratory rats. "What we found was contrary to our expectation in that although after a single injection there could be a suppression of seizure, when we gave the drug more than once to the rats over a period of days, their seizures actually got worse," Corcoran, a professor in the department of anatomy and cell biology, said Tuesday from Saskatoon. Researchers are able to simulate epilepsy in rats through a process called kindling, in which tiny bursts of low-voltage current are administered over time. With repetition, the electrical discharge spreads from brain cell to brain cell, eventually creating a kind of firestorm of neural activity that resembles what occurs in human epilepsy. Corcoran's team found that kindling gets worse when rats are injected with high doses of the marijuana-like drug. The doses were high enough that the rats also ended up stoned: some were immobile, had changes in muscle tone and their ability to walk a beam - a measure of intoxication - was affected, he said.  
The long-term goal of such research is to figure out how a certain drug might work in humans, said Corcoran, who has been working in epilepsy research for about 30 years. "Ultimately, it's always an empirical question," he said. "Do the effects of a drug in a rat predict the effect of that drug in a human being? For drugs that are useful in treating epilepsy, that's generally been the case." Those effects also depend on the type of seizure, he said. With those that originate in the brain stem, located between the brain and the spinal cord, cannabis-like compounds have been found to suppress convulsions. But "what our work suggests is that seizures that originate in the forebrain, particularly in the temporal lobe, probably are not the best candidate type of epileptic seizures to be treating with marijuana-like drugs." While it's difficult to calculate the human equivalent of the doses given to the rats - especially since street pot and reportedly even government-sanctioned medicinal marijuana can vary in strength from batch to batch - Corcoran said the study's findings should possibly give pause to some people using cannabis for epilepsy. "If I were a clinician and I had the option of using marijuana to treat seizures, I'd want to make very sure what kind of seizure type the particular patient was displaying, because some seizures might benefit from these drugs, but others might get worse," he said. And for those with epilepsy who want to use weed to self-medicate? "I would say, 'Make sure you don't take whopping big doses and be sensitive to the kind of epilepsy you have.' " Copyright: 2004 The Canadian Press
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