cannabisnews.com: Marijuana as Medicine Marijuana as Medicine Posted by FoM on August 02, 2000 at 07:14:22 PT Parliament should make a useful drug available Source: Globe & Mail The Ontario Court of Appeal has decided that Terrance Parker can be both a legal pot grower and a legal pot user -- he, and everyone like him who requires the drug for medical purposes.The court reasoned on Monday that, since the federal law on marijuana possession and cultivation doesn't recognize the paramount nature of Mr. Parker's need to use the drug to control the epileptic seizures that have afflicted him for almost 40 years, it is "forcing Parker to choose between his health and imprisonment." This does not accord with "principles of fundamental justice," and therefore the law should be struck down.The effect of the judgment on everyone but Mr. Parker is stayed for a year to give Ottawa an opportunity to redraft the law to include a medical marijuana exemption. While the government has recently started to grant selected people the right to obtain marijuana to ease symptoms associated with various medical conditions, the court pointed out that there is no clear rationale for what and who qualifies. Being dependent on the "unfettered and unstructured discretion of the Minister of Health is not consistent with the principles of fundamental justice," it concluded.The judgment is right both in legal reasoning and in matters of the human spirit. It is madness for every sick person to have to appeal to the federal Health Minister to get his or her drug. (An estimated 150,000 people in Ontario alone might benefit from marijuana's ability to ease the effects of AIDS, glaucoma, cancer and epilepsy.) It is also madness that, once the exemption has been granted, there is no safe and legal supply of the drug for those entitled to have it.The present ministerial exemption system seems designed not to speed delivery of medical marijuana to the sick people who would benefit from it, but to employ all the sticky slowness of a bureaucracy to limit medical marijuana's use.More than Kafkaesque, this approach ignores obvious parallels in the rest of the medical system. Other drugs, notably opiates, have two regimes applied to them. While their recreational use is illegal, their medical use isn't. The decision about when it is appropriate to prescribe them isn't a whim of bureaucracy; it is soberly arrived at by a doctor and patient.There is nothing about marijuana that says it should be treated any differently from other drugs, and a lot (its physical effects and addictive characteristics are relatively benign) to say it is ultimately safer than many other drugs.In the interest of both the sick people of Canada and natural justice, the federal government should bow to the wisdom of the courts and get on with providing a cheap and easy way for sick people to get their medication.The clear reason this hasn't already happened is the oft-stated fear that the medical use of marijuana is simply a stalking horse for total legalization.While nowhere in the Western world is smoking the drug entirely legal, there have been various efforts at what is sometimes termed decriminalization. In the Netherlands, licensed "coffee shops" selling the drug openly must adhere to strict rules, including not selling more than 30 grams at a time and being responsible for public disturbances caused by high clients. In those rare instances when people are charged with possession, the penalty is confiscation, not a jail term. The Swiss have recently proposed a similar law.In many other European countries -- and indeed in many jurisdictions in Canada -- possession of a small amount of marijuana is simply ignored by the police.So why not go all the way and make marijuana legal? Some worry about the social side effects: the marijuana-high equivalent of drunk driving, or marijuana as a gateway to harder drugs.The case for these concerns is not strong. What studies there are suggest that while there may be some loss of control, marijuana users become more cautious drivers when they get high. The most likely outcome of marijuana smoking seems to be more marijuana smoking.What is clear is that outright legalization would cause serious trouble with the United States, where prohibiting the substance is part of a national drug war.Therefore, Canada should follow its historical nature and take a middle path first proposed in 1973 by the LeDain Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs. Decriminalize marijuana. Make using it illegal in name but regulated and legal in practice.Letters to The Editor: Letters GlobeAndMail.caContact Information:http://www.globeandmail.com/services/site/help.htmlPublished: Wednesday, August 2, 2000 Copyright © 2000 Globe InteractiveRelated Articles: Rewrite Law on Marijuana http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6589.shtmlOntario Court Says Law Against MJ Unconstitutionalhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6576.shtmlOntario Court of Appeal Upholds Decision http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6571.shtmlCannabisNews Search - Canadahttp://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=CanadaCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archives:http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #1 posted by Ethan Russo, MD on August 02, 2000 at 08:02:45 PT: Oh, Canada! Oh, Canada! The Great White North Rules! You go, girl! Please export your revolution to us wayfard folks South of the Border. 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