Pubdate: Sat, 08 Oct 2016
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2016 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Grant Robertson
Page: A14

MEDICINAL POT USERS GET A NEW KIND OF RELIEF

Ottawa's move to allow for accredited lab testing would take worry out
of the safety of cannabis - and without the sense of guilt

When Mandy McKnight's severely epileptic son was four, he suffered as
many as 80 seizures a day. After prescription drugs failed, the Ottawa
mother turned to cannabis oil, which she had heard could help. The
impact was remarkable: Within 24 hours, the seizures subsided and it
was 10 days until he had another.

But when Ms. McKnight began administering regular doses of cannabis
oil to her son, she lived in fear of punishment. Although her son's
medical cannabis was obtained legally through a prescription, she had
to make the oil herself at home. And having that oil tested at a lab -
to ensure its potency and that the dosage was correct - was
technically illegal.

Ms. McKnight found a lab willing to do the work under the table on
humanitarian grounds, but she worried. "Every time we had to mail the
oil to the lab, I was always afraid that child-protection services was
going to come knock on my door and take my kids away," Ms. McKnight
said. "I'd never broken a law in my life, but I was being forced to
break laws to help [my son] live, which was crazy."

Kecia Laitinen faced the same problem. The B.C. nurse, who augments
her cancer treatment with a cannabis extract that she could not find
from a licensed supplier, was barred by law from getting the product
tested at labs. "I started thinking: 'Wait, I feel like I should have
more rights here than I do.' "

Their plight illustrates how Canada's prohibitive testing laws for
cannabis prevent those who need it most from getting the product
screened to tell them exactly what it contains - even if it is
obtained legally.

While Canadians can freely access accredited labs to screen everything
from cosmetics and pharmaceuticals to food products, cannabis remains
barred, even though it was legalized for medical use a long time ago
and despite the government's plans to approve recreational use next
year.

The federal government has started to change those laws, allowing some
patients to use federally accredited labs for cannabis screening. The
changes were announced two weeks after a Globe and Mail investigation
this summer called into question Health Canada's long-held rules that
prevented patients from having medical cannabis screened, even when
their health was at stake.

The changes go a long way toward helping many patients feel less like
criminals, but they are just a promising first step.

For now, only people with a certificate from Health Canada that lets
them grow their own cannabis or buy it from a designated grower can
access the country's top labs. Patients wanting to submit products
from a federally licensed producer, or one of the hundreds of
storefront dispensaries that have proliferated across the country this
year, are technically still barred from doing so.

By definition, that excludes people such as Ms. Laitinen and Ms.
McKnight. However, labs point out they have no way of distinguishing
where the product comes from, so several of those facilities told The
Globe they will test anything that comes their way provided the
patient has the proper certificate. That is a significant development
for patients, and some labs said they believe it is the right thing to
do.

Ms. Laitinen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2015, and
several months later began to seek out the cannabis extract. But when
she was unable to get it from a government-sanctioned producer, she
turned to storefront dispensaries, which are unregulated and
considered illegal by Health Canada, although the federal government
does not sanction or curtail them. Ensuring the oil was safe and had
been produced properly was difficult without sending it to a lab.

"I noticed a huge discrepancy," Ms. Laitinen said. "There were
definitely moments where I thought, this is a bad batch. This isn't
good. And I just knew it from the way it made me feel."

Ms. Laitinen said she would have accessed accredited labs early on if
she could have done it legally. "It's definitely scary," she said.
"It's something that you're putting in your body and that you're
trusting … and in some pretty dire situations for some people."

This year, Health Canada began allowing licenced producers to sell
cannabis oils, another promising step for patients, but the limited
selection means some people are still going to the dispensary market
for strains they need - which exposes them to risks.

Documents obtained by The Globe through the Access to Information Act
show that Health Canada was warned nearly a year ago that dangerous
chemicals not approved for any human use, such as the pesticide
dodemorph, had been found in samples of dispensary cannabis sold in
Vancouver. However, even though those lab results were sent to the
department and to Health Minister Jane Philpott's office, Health
Canada chose not to act on the information.

A separate Globe and Mail investigation this summer found that
one-third of nine samples of cannabis from dispensaries in Toronto
contained potentially harmful bacteria or mould that would not have
met Health Canada safety standards, and posed particular risks to
patients with compromised immune systems.

The investigation also revealed how restrictive the government's
testing rules were, showing that labs were warned by Health Canada not
to do tests for anyone other than a licensed medical marijuana company
- - a threat taken so seriously that the lab that tested for The Globe
did so as a public service on condition that the newspaper would not
identify the facility.

After more than a month of silence, Health Canada acknowledged two
weeks ago it was concerned about the situation regarding patient
safety and that protections are needed.

"The test results provided to the Department by your paper bear this
out," the government said in a statement to The Globe. A department
spokeswoman said the government is working on new regulations that
"can be expected to include strict safety mechanisms and quality
control assurance."

Ms. McKnight's son can attend school because of the profound effect
cannabis oil has had in reducing his seizures. Ms. McKnight and her
husband were once forced to make cannabis oil in the family's kitchen,
but can now buy most of what they need from a medical marijuana
company, which is a welcome development.

But one strain their son takes is still unavailable in oil form, so
they must produce it themselves, which means they require testing to
ensure they are not giving him too much tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC,
which produces the drug's intoxicating effect, as opposed to
cannabidiol, or CBD, which helps with the seizures.

"To me, this is his medicine. It's the only thing he takes now," Ms.
McKnight said. "The only way to properly dose it is through testing."

Now that the government has started loosening the rules on lab
screening, and is constructing new regulations, she believes labs
should have standardized procedures to ensure they are all testing for
the same properties and contaminants, and that results from one lab to
the next are consistent.

"The testing was critical to his treatment," Ms. McKnight said of the
screening she had done under the table at a sympathetic facility over
the past few years. "But there's no standards. How do I know [the
labs] are doing things right? You really are at the mercy of them."
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MAP posted-by: Matt