Pubdate: Sun, 29 Jul 2007
Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact:  http://www.ottawasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/329
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n900/a07.html
Author: Philippe Lucas
Note: Parenthetical remark by the Sun editor, headline by newshawk

INSPECTORS ARE THERE TO COUNT CANNABIS PLANTS, PERIOD

Re: "Inspectors needed now" (July 27). Kerry Thompson is right, both 
legal medical cannabis users and their neighbours would benefit 
greatly if Health Canada hired inspectors to ensure the safety of 
legal medical cannabis cultivation facilities; however, this may be 
wishful thinking.

The inspectors' job, unfortunately, has nothing to do with safety: 
The inspectors hired by Health Canada are there to count cannabis 
plants, period. As has been amply demonstrated throughout the life of 
this much-maligned federal program, the government's interest and 
actions are focused on the moral and legal regulation of some of our 
sickest citizens. The function the inspectors serve is the equivalent 
of having your drugstore hire a stranger to come in and rifle through 
your medicine cabinet.

Unfortunately, taxpayers are on the hook to pay for these arbitrary 
and invasive inspections and for this failed federal medical cannabis 
policy and program, and -- as Thompson rightly suggests -- we all 
expect and deserve so much better from Health Canada.

Philippe Lucas

Executive director, Vancouver Island Compassion Society

(There are obviously many bugs to work out in this inspection system)
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom