The following article is written by Gwen Landolt, the retiring President of The Drug Prevention Network of Canada. This piece will be published in the January edition of the REAL Women voice, REALity.
Chuck Doucette has been elected the new President of DPNC.
THE COURTS MEDDLING ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA
Courts’ meddling on issues about which they are not properly informed has caused chaos. There is no better example of this than the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision to legalize marijuana for medical purposes.
In 2000, in the case Regina vs Parker, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered that marijuana used for medical purposes was a constitutional right, even though there was little evidence introduced to support this conclusion. It was simply an ideological decision made by activist judges.
Marijuana for Medical Purposes Not Justified
Medical literature is replete with hundreds of studies about the physical and emotional harm that can result from this plant. Recent studies reveal that psychosis, a severe form of mental illness, is much higher in people who begin using marijuana at or before 15 years of age. Amotivational syndrome (characterized by a person who has no initiative, no drive and no energy) is well documented in people who use this drug regularly. Increased problems with depression and anxiety have also been documented. The same dose that “works” today won’t work forever and increased amounts are needed to obtain the same effect. This is what defines chemical dependence.
The tar and carcinogens in smoked marijuana are just as dangerous as in cigarettes or even worse, since many cigarettes have filters. Marijuana smoke is an irritant to the lining of the nose and lungs, which can cause chronic cough, sinus irritation and lung diseases, such as emphysema and lung dysplasia. Decreased testosterone in males and altered menstrual cycles in females are other adverse effects. The brain is also affected negatively, with a decrease in both the memory capacity and the ability to think, along with an increase in seizure risk. Slowed reaction times are also clear consequences of marijuana use and can have significant detrimental effects on driving skills.
With such harmful effects, the question then arises whether it is worth these risks to allow marijuana for medical reasons. Unfortunately, the current data on the medical use of marijuana are very limited and what little there are available, indicate that it is not usually effective for pain relief, as claimed by advocates.
In addition, there are no standardized dosages as well as no standards of concentration of the plant or its purity. All in all, the use of marijuana for medical purposes was not a reasonable decision for the Ontario court to make. The Ontario Courts, therefore, were way off base in ordering marijuana’s availability for medical treatment. So, what else is new with judicially active Ontario courts?
The Obtuse Allan Rock, Liberal Minister of Health
Instead of appealing this nonsensical and dangerous court decision, the then Liberal Minister of Health, Allan Rock, eagerly set about authorizing access to marijuana for medical use, by amending the regulations, and also by establishing a federal government operated marijuana grow-op, in an abandoned copper mine, in Flin Flon, MB. This was a disaster. There was no consistency in the quality of the marijuana produced, and the smokers refused to buy the government’s product. Canada, by the way, is the only government in the world that produced its own marijuana for sale.
As a consequence of the marijuana users refusing to buy the government’s marijuana, the government issued licenses to the marijuana users to grow their own marijuana, or to allow someone else to grow it for them. The licensees, however, had to first obtain a physician’s certificate indicating the medical need for the marijuana.
This led to a new legal challenge in the Ontario Superior Court by a marijuana user, who was unable to obtain the required physician’s authorization to grow his own marijuana.
On April 13, 2011, the Superior Court of Ontario, declared the medical marijuana program was unconstitutional because the government’s system to supply medical marijuana was ineffective. The government appealed this decision and the appeal is to be heard in the Ontario Court of Appeal in March 2012.
In the meantime, Health Canada has come up with yet another system of providing medical marijuana. The Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq, announced, in June 2011, that the current system of allowing medical marijuana users to grow their own or have someone else grow it for them had become dangerous. These growers do not follow local electrical, health and safety by-laws. Further, there were so many licenses to grow marijuana, that it was virtually impossible for municipalities to know who was licensed, and whether the licensed growers were conforming to the conditions of the license. As a result, Ms. Aglukkaq’s new rules provide that medical marijuana patients will be required to obtain a document from their doctor, authorizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes. This document will then be presented only to a government licensed commercial grower of marijuana.
Doctors Refuse to Cooperate with the new Government Plan
The 75,000 members of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), however, announced that they would have nothing to do with this plan. The CMA stated that its refusal to participate is due to the fact that marijuana is an untested and unregulated substance about which most physicians know little or nothing.
The fact is that marijuana has never gone through the normal regulatory review process and this has made physicians wary of its use for medicinal purposes. Physicians also fear being exposed to legal action and becoming a “go-to” source for people seeking marijuana, not to alleviate their pain, but rather, to alter their consciousness.
No drug company wishes to evaluate smoked marijuana as a medicine, as there is no money in it for them. Similarly, funding agencies refuse to become involved with this problem, as they don’t see smoking marijuana as a safe, viable drug delivery system. For these reasons, “medical” marijuana has not been endorsed by any of the major medical societies i.e., Canadian Medical Association, the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Osteopathic Association (A0A), and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).
Marijuana users want to smoke it – and are using the medical approach to achieve this so as to normalize its use. They are assisted in this objective by the politically activist judges on the Ontario courts.
