Pubdate: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 Source: Globe and Mail (Canada) Copyright: 2002, The Globe and Mail Company Contact: http://www.globeandmail.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168 Author: Jane Gadd, Courts Reporter Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada) DON'T THROW OUT FEDERAL POT LAWS, LAWYER WARNS Regulations Ensure MDs, Not Patients, Govern Medical Use Of Cannabis, Court Told TORONTO -- Throwing out Ottawa's regulations on medical use of marijuana would lead to a tidal wave of demand to treat "everything from warts to hemorrhoids," a Justice Department lawyer warned in Ontario Superior Court yesterday. Fighting a court bid by patients who want easier access to a drug they say helps them, lawyer Harvey Frankel said the regulations ensure that doctors, not patients, decide who gets an exemption from federal laws banning marijuana possession. "If it's to be left solely to the discretion of people who stand up and say, 'I use marijuana for medical purposes,' that's anyone and everyone," Mr. Frankel said. "There's going to be something wrong with everybody. [For] any ailment known to mankind, someone's claimed marijuana is good for it." The government is opposing a court application by several sick Canadians who want access to legally grown marijuana without going through the bureaucratic process involved. The HIV, cancer, hepatitis and multiple sclerosis patients, along with the Toronto Compassion Centre, which supplies illicit marijuana to 1,200 people, say Ottawa's medical marijuana access regulations are "a constitutionally deficient regime that operate as an illusory exemption." They have told the court that doctors are reluctant to write marijuana prescriptions and that patients object to providing their names, addresses and photographs to the government to obtain exemption cards. They want Mr. Justice Sidney Lederman to order Ottawa to resurrect a shelved plan to make marijuana, grown under government auspices in a mine shaft in Flin Flon, Man., available to medical users. Mr. Frankel told the judge that it is not the courts' place to order governments to do anything; they can only tell them what not to do. Besides, the amount of marijuana in the mine would meet the demand for less than one week, he said. Quoting figures provided by Brent Zettl, president of Prairie Plant Systems, he said 200 kilograms of marijuana has been harvested in Flin Flon. The Compassion Club serves 1,200 people in Toronto, and the average medical user smokes five grams a day, Mr. Frankel said. Canada's population is 10 times that of Toronto, but even if the national demand is only five times that of Toronto the result would be 6,000 people smoking five grams a day, 30 kilograms a day in total. Since Parliament introduced the regulations in July, 2001, 565 people have applied for medical exemptions to the laws against marijuana possession and 343 exemptions have been granted, the lawyer said. The remaining 222 have not been completed because of missing information or photographs, not because of the absence of doctors' signatures, Mr. Frankel said. The regulations were the government's response to an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling in 2000 that found the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act discriminated against sick people who benefit from marijuana use. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D