Pubdate: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 Source: Kamloops Daily News (CN BC) Copyright: 2011 Kamloops Daily News Contact: http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/679 Author: Jay Mack MARIJUANA ACCESS CHANGES WILL HURT THE LAW-ABIDING I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep concerns about the proposed changes to the medical marijuana access program. Switching from a system where individuals can grow their own medicine inexpensively to a system where the medicine must be bought from a for-profit vendor is puzzling. By doing so the government, in an attempt to curb this unnamed "criminal element," would be doing little more then putting a large financial burden on people who have been diagnosed as extremely ill. The average user of the medical marijuana program uses between three and five grams of doctor-prescribed medicine a day; this amount of medication purchased from a government designated grower would cost the average patient between $450-$750 a month ($5,400-$9,000 annually). Where are theses medically ill individuals to acquire such a substantial sum of money? Also, with the inability for individuals to cheaply produce their own medicine at home, these people will seek out government subsidized pharmaceutical medications to fill the void left by the absence of homegrown medical marijuana. An example of this would be the pharmaceutical THC Tetrahydrocannabinol, which would cost between $1,000-$1,500 a month. Although this figure is greater than the cost of buying medical marijuana from a government grower, these pharmaceutical alternatives are highly subsidized by the government agencies. With such public concern over the economic sustainability of our health care programs, it would be counter productive to add the burden of providing a medical marijuana alternative to thousands of Canadians. One would also be remiss to not look at the threat of non-compliance to a change in the marijuana access program. Individuals growing medical marijuana now may simply continue to grow marijuana for their own use or the use of other medical recipients regardless of the change in legislation. If this were to occur, which it certainly would to some degree, the government would have to step in and do one of two things -- ignore these individual growers and risk looking ineffectual or step in and prosecute medial growers. To propose that these amendments would "keep our children and communities safe" from an unnamed medical marijuana "criminal element" is not only misleading but is also inaccurate. The substance abuse problems in my community are based on the trade in cocaine and crystal methamphetamine. The government has simply not made a strong enough case for the reason to change the medical marijuana access program. Stricter regulations will only hurt those law-abiding citizens who follow the law. JAY MACK Kamloops - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom