Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jul 2014
Source: Windsor Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 The Windsor Star
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/501
Author: Marie-Danielle Smith
Page: A10

MARIJUANA PRODUCERS TRYING TO WOO DOCTORS

Critics Complain of 'Hard Sell'

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.

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.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom