Pubdate: Fri, 03 Jul 2015
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2015 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Gloria Galloway
Page: A4

ANTI-POT POLICIES HELP INDUSTRY GROW

Despite Ottawa's clear stand against marijuana, illegal dispensaries
have flourished, while cannabis is now traded on the TSX

As the Conservative government's champion in the war on pot, Health
Minister Rona Ambrose has taken some heavy blows and faces the
prospect of more.

Ms. Ambrose was "outraged" in early June when the Supreme Court ruled
that legal medical marijuana users would be permitted to eat the drug
as well as smoke it. She was "deeply disappointed" last week when
Vancouver said it would regulate marijuana dispensaries, most of which
obtain their supply from unauthorized sources.

Her government's efforts a year ago to end the right of medical pot
users to legally grow cannabis in their homes have been temporarily
thwarted by a court challenge and could ultimately be struck down as a
violation of civil rights.

And, despite the Conservative government's vehement stand against pot,
often wielded as a political club against Liberal Leader Justin
Trudeau's stated support for legalization, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper has presided over a period of increasing acceptance and
normalization of marijuana in Canada.

Kirk Tousaw, the lawyer who successfully defended Victoria pot baker
Owen Smith in challenging the prohibition on edible forms of the drug,
recently filed submissions against the government's attempts to stop
users from growing their own.

Four plaintiffs are asking that the government's Marijuana For Medical
Purposes law be struck down as unconstitutional because the pot
supplied by licensed producers is too expensive, and patients, they
say, must choose between their "liberty" and their "health."

"I think that the Smith decision provides the federal court with a
road map as to how the Supreme Court of Canada views medicalcannabis
issues," Mr. Tousaw said in a telephone interview. "When the effect of
a law is to harm already sick people, it's arbitrary and
unconstitutional and patients are entitled to make reasonable medical
choices and are entitled to have access to lawful forms of treatment
under their physician's direction."

Mr. Tousaw and others argue that the government is losing the battle
to tightly control medical marijuana because its approach was
wrongheaded from the start, and that its own policies are largely
responsible for the widespread emergence of the drug from the
underground subculture. The government doesn't believe in marijuana as
medicine, but, in its zeal to stop people from growing their own, it
has licensed marijuana companies to be publicly traded, Mr. Tousaw
said.

As a result, "Mr. Harper's government is responsible for essentially
creating the largest and only federally sanctioned commercial regime
for producing and selling medical cannabis on this continent, a regime
that includes publicly traded companies now in the midst of merging
and acquiring each other," he said. "So despite the Conservative
government's real hatred for medical cannabis =C2=85 you can now day-trad
e
medical cannabis stocks on the Toronto Stock Exchange."

The use of cannabis for medical purposes, and recreationally, has gone
way past the point of being normalized in Canada, Mr. Tousaw said.
Repeated polls have suggested that, while access to marijuana may not
be a priority for most Canadians, a majority want to see the law
softened and a large number want the drug legalized.

The government responds that it has an obligation to keep marijuana
away from the vast majority of Canadian children who are not receiving
it for medical purposes. While it doesn't want to deny a cancer
patient access to a medicine that he or she believes to be beneficial,
government officials point out that marijuana is not an approved drug
in Canada.

"While Canadian courts have required the government to allow access to
marijuana when authorized by a physician, the law is clear that this
must be done in a controlled fashion to protect public health and
safety," a spokeswoman for Ms. Ambrose said.

There is a fundamental difference, she said, between making medical
marijuana available through licensed producers, who are approved by
Health Canada and produce and distribute their product in a very
controlled and secure fashion, and illegal storefronts that normalize
the use of marijuana by having these stores in plain site of families
and children.

"This Conservative government wants to stop kids from smoking
marijuana and we do not support making access to illegal drugs
easier," she said. "Storefronts selling marijuana are illegal and will
remain illegal under this Conservative government."

But they exist and are expanding in number.

The government had the opportunity to fully regulate medical-cannabis
dispensaries, which repeatedly asked the government to make them
lawful access points for patients, but it refused to do so, Mr. Tousaw
said. At the same time, there was a void in supply and the
dispensaries exist to fill that void. "So, in a way," he said, "the
refusal of the government to regulate the dispensaries has produced
the proliferation of dispensaries all across this country."

But Rielle Capler, a researcher at the University of British Columbia
who has studied medical marijuana regulation, said the explosion in
pot dispensaries coincided with the government's efforts in 2013 to
rewrite the law to stop home-grown operations and replace them with
licensed producers.

"There wasn't a smooth transition," Ms. Capler said. "A very small
number of legally licensed producers were operating. A lot of them
didn't have adequate supply. So there really was nowhere for patients
to get a legal supply."

Meanwhile, the price of the legal pot was very high, she said. So many
of the medical users who stopped growing their own turned to the
dispensaries.

The government says there is no supply problem now that there are 25
licensed producers.

But the storefronts are unlikely to disappear any time soon. Jamie
Shaw, the president of the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis
Dispensaries, said there are clear links between government policies
and the rise of the unlicensed medical-marijuana industry.

"They created this whole home-grow model, then they tried to outlaw
the home-grow model and created a new corporate model, but all of
those models are running at the exact same time now," Ms. Shaw said.

In the end, she argues, the dispensaries are beneficial for law
enforcers, health authorities and patients.

"As long as you can trace a product back if they are having any
problems, even if they are not following any standards or anything
else, just having a place to say 'that's where I got it from' allows
public officials to act on that and move to protect public safety,"
Ms. Shaw said. "By pushing all that back into the shadows, there's no
ability to respond to that whatsoever."

It is certainly not what the government intended. Mr. Tousaw says the
system of marijuana control, which still sees thousands of people
arrested for possession every year, has been a failure.

"If the goal is to prevent access, it's not working," he said. "If the
goal is to prevent people from participating in the black market, it's
having the exact opposite consequence. If the goal is to enshrine a
system where lots of Canadians have their future life prospects
diminished because of arrest, well, it's doing that. And it's doing
that unfortunately very well."
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MAP posted-by: Matt