Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jul 2014
Source: Regina Leader-Post (CN SN)
Copyright: 2014 The Leader-Post Ltd.
Website: http://www.leaderpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/361
Author: Marie-Danielle Smith
Page: A5

MARIJUANA PRODUCERS ATTEMPT TO WOO DOCTORS

Companies making the pitch

OTTAWA - Representatives for licensed medical marijuana companies are
being sent to doctors' offices as part of a push to get hesitant
physicians to prescribe the drug more often. It's a development that
has dismayed Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti, the president of the
Canadian Medical Association, who says that a largely unproven
treatment is now being thrust upon doctors, putting them into
potential confrontations with patients looking to score drugs and
vendors looking to peddle them.

"I'm actually quite frightened," he said. Francescutti said some of
Canada's 13 licensed marijuana producers are operating in the same way
that pharmaceutical companies do.

"They've got product they have to move. So they've hired the best
advertising firms," he said. "Now, they've got very professional,
well-dressed men and women knocking on doctors' offices."

That's a problem for Francescutti, at least in part, because he
doesn't think medical marijuana has been put through stringent enough
testing.

Frankly, he said, there is a lack of medical evidence that marijuana
products are effective.

"There would have to be a clinical trial for its effect on depression,
for its effect on joint pain. You'd have to have probably a thousand
trials that would have to be repeated," he said. "If marijuana is so
magical, then how come the trials aren't out there?"

Francescutti acknowledged that one of the reasons those trials may not
have been done previously could have been a lack of funding: "That
could be part of it."

Tweed, Canada's first publicly traded medical marijuana producer, has
hired three "academic detailers" to visit doctors' offices.

Mark Zekulin, executive vice-president of the Smiths Falls, Ont.-based
company, said they are "out there hitting the pavement, introducing
who we are."

He said doctors get a lot of visits from many different pharmaceutical
companies, but "we're a little different." He said most doctors are
receptive and interested in learning more.

Tweed's director of business and medical development, Chris Murray,
said there is a lot of apprehension from doctors in terms of the "hard
sell from pharma reps."

"We are not out there putting a hard sell on medical marijuana," said
Zekulin. "There is information out there, and we're not making it up.
It's to make doctors aware of that information. How they want to
integrate it into their practice is up to them."

Neil Closner, CEO of MedReleaf, a Markham, Ont.-based licensed
marijuana producer, said his company does not hire sales reps, though
representatives attend conferences and events that physicians attend.

"I don't feel that this is something we want to be pushing on
physicians," he said.

However, Dr. Alykhan Abdulla, president of the Academy of Medicine
Ottawa, which represents Ottawa physicians at all levels of
government, said he believes more than 90 per cent of physicians would
be hesitant to prescribe medical marijuana.

"The average family doctor has never learned how to prescribe medical
marijuana. It's not taught in medical school," said Abdulla, who said
he has prescribed the herb. He said companies are not only sending
representatives to lobby doctors but also making calls, writing emails
and sending faxes. He receives two or three of these every week.

"These people have an agenda, they want to sell it, they want to make
money," said Abdulla. "They're not pushy. They're professional people.
. They're trying their best, but it's the wrong way to approach it."

When it comes to clinical trials, MedReleaf alone has 20 clinical
trials underway. It also draws data from a partner company, Tikun
Olam, which has treated thousands of patients under Israel's medical
marijuana system.

After seeing that data, many doctors "end up walking away converted,"
said Closner, of MedReleaf.

Tweed is not developing formal trials, but is building a database
based on the chemical contents of its various marijuana strains and
feedback from patients and doctors. But Francescutti said the industry
as it stands now has "got nothing to do with medicinal properties.
It's got everything to do with people wanting to smoke dope."

He said that the court system was "conned" into thinking that
marijuana has significant health benefits. It was the courts that said
patients should be given access, and it was then Health Canada that
"dumped" this responsibility onto doctors, he said. It's akin to
"legalized dope-pushing," he said.

Francescutti said his position on medical marijuana has resulted in
hateful, threatening emails.

"This is a fringe element," he said, adding some doctors feel
intimidated not only by marijuana company reps but by the patients
themselves.

Francescutti described a scenario with a male patient, 6-foot-2 and
113 kilograms, approaching a "tiny, little female" doctor who had
recently immigrated to the country.

"He says to you, 'I want marijuana,' " said Francescutti. "Do you
think you'd feel intimidated?"

He said he received a call from "a physician exactly like that," who
told him she was terrified. "She said, 'Here's this big man in my
office threatening me that if I didn't give marijuana to him there
would be consequences,' " Francescutti said.

"What started out as a cute little story about marijuana is turning
into a frickin' nightmare," he said. "We just need one doctor to get
killed over this, then it would make a great movie. I hope it's not
me. I hope it's not any doctor. Or reporter."

Barring extensive clinical study, "Maybe the best thing that could
happen is Trudeau gets elected and he legalizes it," said
Francescutti.

He said he doesn't think that would be the right thing, but it would
take the problem out of doctors' hands.

"We'd have a doped-up nation," he said. "We'd probably have an
increase in the sales of chips, so I guess I'd buy some stocks in
chips and nachos. That's about the only good that would come of this."
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MAP posted-by: Matt