Pubdate: Sat, 21 Sep 2002
Source: Daily News, The (CN NS)
Copyright: 2002 The Daily News
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/halifax/dailynews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/179
Author: Debbie Stultz-Giffin
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1713/a11.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada)

MAN SHOULD GET ACCESS TO POT IN JAIL

To the editor:

I was appalled to learn that Michael Patriquen was incarcerated for six 
years while being denied safe, legal, affordable access to his medication 
while behind bars (Patriquen Gets Six Years, Weed Pulled, The Daily News, 
Sept.11).

Everyone is entitled to have access to their medication. All other forms of 
medication are readily made available to prisoners. Furthermore, not only 
one, but three physicians, two of them being pain-management specialists, 
concurred that medicinal marijuana is what works best to treat Patriquen's 
chronic pain. Prescribed "legal poisons" miserably failed this man. Health 
Canada approved Patriquen's application to possess and grow medicinal 
marijuana. It is no small task to pass Health Canada's rigorous regulatory 
regime to receive a federal exemption.

If Corrections Canada and Health Canada aren't prepared to offer Patriquen 
the proper medical treatment he requires, then he should be placed on house 
arrest. At home, he will have access to his medication without being 
subject to unaffordable jailhouse prices of $50 a gram (keep in mind that 
his current prescription is for five grams of ingested marijuana daily). 
Nor will he be exposed to the questionable dispensing techniques of 
jailhouse marijuana (for smuggling purposes, insert in rectum prior to 
dispensing).

What abhorrent treatment of a diagnosed chronic-pain sufferer. I thought 
that torture was an archaic concept. Apparently not!

Debbie Stultz-Giffin

Federal medical marijuana exemption holder

Bridgetown
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager