Pubdate: Tue, 08 Aug 2000
Source: Nelson Daily News (CN BC)
Contact:  http://www.nelsondailynews.com/
Author: Patrick Basham
Note: Patrick Basham is Director of The Social Affairs Centre at The Fraser 
Institute, a Vancouver-based economic research organization.

A VICTORY FOR SENSIBLE DRUG POLICY

Despite Canadians exhibiting a collective clear-mindedness on contemporary 
society's most emotive issue, drug policy reform has passed without 
appropriate interest from policy-makers.  No longer.

On July 31, the argument that doctors may prescribe marijuana as a medical 
treatment for seriously or terminally ill patients (so-called "medical 
marijuana") received support in a seminal judicial decision. The Ontario 
Court of Appeal, the province's highest court, upheld a 1997 Ontario 
Superior Court ruling that the prohibition against medical marijuana 
infringed the rights of Mr. Terry Parker, an epileptic under Section 7 of 
the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The court declared the marijuana possession section of this country's 
Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to be unconstitutional as it fails to 
recognize that marijuana can be used for medicinal pruposes.  The court has 
instructed the federal government that it has 12 months to rewrite the law 
to allow for medical marijuana or marijuana possession will be effectively 
decriminalized.

The court's judgement reflected what's been conclusively and repeatedly 
demonstrated: marijuana serves as a tremendously helpful appetite stimulant 
or pain reliever to patients afflicted with epilepsy, AIDS, cancer, 
glaucoma, or multiple sclerosis.  Prior to yesterday's ruling, only 50 
Canadians were legally entitled to smoke marijuana.  Now, an estimated 150, 
000 people in Ontario alone could benefit from the medical use of marijuana.

Opposition stems from a combination of ignorance and well-intentioned, if 
misplaced, moralism which argues that medical marijuana promotes drug 
experimentation and abuse.  Suffice it to say, both the historical and 
scientific evidence demonstrate otherwise.

The standard government line remains that there's no official evidence 
marijuana helps ease patients' symptoms. After all, as US deputy drug czar 
Dr. Don Vereen noted, "Smoked marijuana has not been tested (by the 
government)." Fortunately, judicial wisdom and medical expertise is 
overcoming such political intransigence north and south of the border.

As Dr. Jerome Kassirer, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, has 
written, "Thousands of patients with cancer, AIDS, and other diseases 
report they have obtained striking relief from these devastating symptoms 
by smoking marijuana." He suggested that, "The argument that it would be a 
signal to the young that "marjuana is OK" is specious."

This view reflects a medical history dating to 2727 BC - the first recorded 
listing, in Chinese pharmocopoeia, of cannabis as medicine. Revealingly, 
North America's prohibition against marijuana occurred against the advice 
of the medical community.  More recently, in 1988 Judge Francis Young, the 
US Drug Enforcement Agency's own administrative-law judge, determined that 
marijuana had a clearly established medical use and, therefore, should be 
reclassified as a prescriptive drug.  Taking a page out of the Canadian 
playbook, the US government took no action.

The therapeutic benefits of smoking mrijuana are numerous, hence a 1991 
Harvard University survey's finding that 44 percent of oncologists 
recommended marijuana to patients suffering from chemotherapy-induced 
nausea.  A 1997 National Institutes of Health panel concluded that smoking 
marijuana may help treat a number of conditions, including nausea and pain. 
The so-called "wasting syndrome" that afflicts those in the latter stages 
of AIDS may be arrested through marijuana's ability to stimulate the 
appetite. There's also considerable anecdotal evidence the marijuana 
relieves some of the painful symptoms of multiple sclerosis and spinal cord 
injuries.

Yes, there's the potential for harm from smoking marijuana, especially 
respiratory damage.  These long-term effects are irrelevant, however, to a 
person who's suffering a slow, terribly painful death.

What's missing here isn't public opinion.  Most people agree that 
marijuana-smoking sick people should be treated as patients, rather than as 
criminals.  According to a recent COMPAS poll, 92 percent of Canadians 
believe medical marijuana use should not be a criminal offense.

Despite popular approval and judicial progress, our legislation remains 
both anachronistic and cruel.  To continue to process, charge and convict 
people for medicinal use of marijuana is a blatant waste of limited 
resources.  The law must be changed.

Patrick Basham is Director of The Social Affairs Centre at The Fraser 
Institute, a Vancouver-based economic research organization.
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