Pubdate: Thu, 05 Jun 2014
Source: Metro (Ottawa, CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 Metro
Contact:  http://www.metronews.ca/Ottawa
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4032
Author: Trevor Greenway
Page: 6
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada)

MEDICAL WEED USERS ARE NOT STONERS: DOCTOR

Health Professional Turns to Skype to Help Patients Fill Pot 
Prescriptions As Colleagues Fear Career Consequences

Canadian doctors who prescribe medical marijuana are feeling a chill, 
as health officials apply pressure on them to stop prescribing a drug 
they know little about.

Daviau says new rules governing Canada's medical marijuana program 
are making it harder for patients to find doctors willing to 
prescribe the drug.

A doctor in Toronto was willing to go on the record to talk about the 
stigma surrounding medical pot and the benefits patients derive from 
the drug. But when he heard several colleagues are being scrutinized 
by the College of Physicians and Surgeons, he backed out.

"Patients' doctors do not want to prescribe and they think that the 
college has said that you cannot prescribe," said the doctor, whom we 
agreed to keep anonymous. "It's uncomfortable and there is a stigma behind it."

The physician has started seeing patients via Skype - connected with 
him through a private firm for a $300 fee - as more and more patients 
are finding it tough to find a doctor willing to sign off on a pot 
prescription. He says telemedicine is sufficient for such 
consultations and the patients provide him and the firm government 
issued identification and their medical records.

"I just don't sit there and openly sign prescriptions for somebody. I 
see them, assess them, get some information from them about what 
treatments they have had," he said, adding his patients are not 
"stoners," but business people, lawyers, even other doctors.

"If it's a young kid who wants to do it just to make it legal, I 
don't see those kinds of people. But if it's someone with cancer that 
can't eat, that has no appetite, that is nauseous all the time and 
they find that when they take this it gets rid of their nausea and 
they can eat - if you are that patient's physician, how can you not 
prescribe it? I just don't understand."

He said the problem is the fact there is no scientific data for 
doctors to refer to when considering prescribing pot to patients with 
multiple sclerosis, cancer and various chronic pain conditions.

"Physicians receive no training," he said. "The average physician 
would have no idea how to prescribe it. They don't know what a gram 
is, or three grams, they don't know."

Fighting the stigma

"There is a political war going on out there behind the scenes and we 
are the pawns right now." Medical marijuana user Sandy Daviau

Restricting pot scripts

Patient: 'It's worse than before'

Sandy Daviau of Quebec spent more than a decade looking for a doctor 
to prescribe medical marijuana for his multiple sclerosis. He said 
with the recent changes to Health Canada's medical pot program, which 
makes doctors the ultimate gatekeepers of the drug, more and more 
patients are finding it hard to access the drug.

"It's worse than before," said Daviau, whose initial physician, Dr. 
Rob Kamermans, was ordered to close his Coe Hill clinic and was 
charged with fraud, forgery and money laundering after he signed off 
on 4,000 pot prescriptions over the course of a year.

It's stories like these that have doctors worried they will get 
nabbed for trying to help patients "There is a clampdown going on 
right now. There is a political war going on out there behind the 
scenes and we are the pawns right now. It's wrong, but they are doing it."

Fighting for his cure

"There is a political war going on out there behind the scenes and we 
are the pawns right now." -Medical marijuana user Sandy Daviau

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario told Metro the 
federal pot program changes warrant "significant concern," as doctors 
are expected to prescribe a drug that has no clinical studies linked to it.

In Quebec, the college is deeply concerned with doctors prescribing 
pot, especially through telemedicine or Skype consultations, which is 
actually illegal in the province.

Spokesperson Dr. Yves Robert said that all forms of e-health are 
under review right now.

"The basic principle here, considering cannabis or not, is the fact 
that prescribing is a medical act that requires an appropriate 
evaluation of the patient's condition and that can't be done if you 
do not see the patient," he said.

Currently, doctors registered in Quebec are forbidden from using 
telemedicine, but doctors from elsewhere can still see Quebec 
patients via Skype. That will soon change, he says.

"We are working right now to update this data and probably in the 
future, physicians who prescribe to a patient in Quebec will have to 
be registered in Quebec."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom