Producing medical marijuana in homes will be phased out, according to proposed new regulations announced Sunday in Maple Ridge

A Sunday afternoon press conference in the training room of Maple Ridge's main fire hall saw changes announced that could put the kibosh on people growing medical marijuana at home by spring 2014.

Under the guise of being legal, there are many pot growing homes around Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows - and likewise across the country - - that must be banned, Minister of Health Leona Aglukkaq told a room of media, local politicians, as well as police officers and fire officials.

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The federal government is poised to eliminate licensed medical marijuana grow ops in homes that have long been criticized for safety concerns and connections to the illegal drug trade.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced in Maple Ridge on Sunday a planned shift to a new system of federally regulated commercial producers of medical pot who will supply authorized users with prescriptions from doctors.

"Under our new rule, only facilities that meet strict security requirements will be able to produce marijuana for medical purposes," Aglukkaq said.

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There will be a lot of smiling and nodding and happy faces at the news that federal health minister Leona Aglukkaq is taking aim at marijuana growers who are hiding behind current laws to operate illegal drug businesses.

Nobody wants illegal grow ops in their neighbourhoods or in their communities.

We all pay for the electricity they steal. We all pay for the service costs they dodge by not paying taxes on their enterprising activities.

Nobody wants the dangers associated with living next door to such operations. There is always the very real risk that their colleagues in crime will bring violence to their "place of business" - which can easily spill onto the streets as they "protect their interests" or into nearby homes through "mistaken identity" or even into local shopping malls as they engage in open battle with one another.

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KINGSTON - Proposed changes to the medical marijuana program could make it increasingly difficult for patients to obtain their drug of choice.

And for Ontario's only registered non-profit marijuana dispensary, the Kingston Compassion Club Society, many of these proposals are a "slap in the face."

Health Canada announced this week that it is getting out of the business of producing and distributing marijuana for medical purposes, opening up the market to private companies that meet strict security and quality control requirements.

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The latest proposals on medical marijuana bring two questions to mind. Is Health Canada incompetent or simply a shill for big pharma? It appears both are true in this instance. Bottom line is that its proposals are not in the best interest of Canadians.

Their suggestions will simply make the superior quality street product more attractive and force Canadians to choose.

They show no leadership on this issue as the bigger issue now is legalized marijuana. The government continues to follow an unpopular position that daily continues to lose ground.

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Susan Martinuk, in her Dec. 15 column "Legalized marijuana opens Pandora's box," provided an inaccurate and incomplete set of claims about marijuana and its claimed dangers.

I write, not as a user, but as a pharmacologist who has followed the sordid story hyping dangers of pot since the LeDain Report of the 1970s. That report summarized the claims about the dangers of marijuana and also compared them to the consequences of the illegality of marijuana use, something Martinuk ignored. It recommended legalization.

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A Kamloops woman who claims a legal medicinal-marijuana grow caused government social workers to temporarily remove her family from their Dallas home says she's launching a human-rights complaint.

Angela Ferguson said Ministry of Children and Family Development social workers booted her family - including her eight-month-old son, 15-year-old stepson and medical-marijuana cardholder husband - from their home on Nov. 28.

According to Ferguson, social workers showed up alongside RCMP, who were responding to a tip about a grow-op. Ferguson said Mounties checked her Health Canada papers and went on their way, but the social workers did not.

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New medical marijuana access rules don't go far enough, say Nanaimo's medical health officer and a Vancouver Island University criminologist.

By March 2014 Health Canada will no longer produce and distribute medical marijuana, or licence patients to access medical pot, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced Sunday.

Cannabis sold for $5 a gram through the program is heavily subsidized and the government plans to offload production to authorized suppliers, while making doctors the sole "gatekeepers" to the drug.

Having marijuana prescribed by doctors, rather than licensed by Health Canada could eliminate access delays of up to six months for patients.

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The federal government is poised to eliminate licensed medical marijuana grow-ops in homes that have long been criticized over safety concerns and connections to the illegal drug trade.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq has announced a planned shift to a new system of federally regulated commercial producers of medical pot who will supply authorized users who have a prescription from their doctor.

"Under our new rule, only facilities that meet strict security requirements will be able to produce marijuana for medical purposes," Aglukkaq told a press conference in Maple Ridge on Sunday, Dec. 16.

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Reduce Risk: Move To End Ability To Grow In Own Homes

Vancouver's police chief is applauding the federal government's move to end a program that allows people with medical conditions to grow marijuana in their own homes.

Chief Jim Chu, who heads the Canadian chiefs of police association, says the change will help reduce the risk of criminals exploiting medical marijuana because only companies meeting security requirements will be able to grow and sell the drug.

However, a grassroots coalition that supports home-grown medical marijuana is trying to rally support for a constitutional challenge of the changes by setting up a trust fund and asking anyone with a medical marijuana licence to join the effort.

Coalition co-founder Jason Wilcox says all people should have the right to access affordable and quality cannabis for medical use by legally producing it themselves.

- - The Canadian Press

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An undercover operation in downtown Victoria has led to 27 drug-trafficking charges and the arrest of seven prolific offenders who could see maximum jail time if convicted, police say.

Twenty-one people have been charged in the past few weeks in what Victoria police call Operation Snowflake.

The street-level drug busts are part of a winter action plan that also includes a crackdown on property crime, pedestrian traffic accidents and drinking and driving.

Police say they were responding to a noticeable increase in drug traffic around View and Douglas streets as well as the 800 and 900 blocks of Pandora Avenue.

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I wonder which federal government crony is about to get rich off the new rules that the feds have announced regarding production of medical marijuana.

We published an editorial not long ago about why we think marijuana should be legalized, as a couple of U. S. states have now done.

Yet here the Conservatives go in the opposite direction, making it more restrictive, even for those who use it medicinally.

And all for the benefit of what we can only imagine will be a few big companies, possibly even the same big pharmaceutical companies that already make billions off of people's poor health.

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The federal government is looking to eliminate licensed medical marijuana grow-ops in homes.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced Sunday a planned shift to a new system of regulated commercial producers of medical pot who will supply authorized users with a doctor's prescription.

The plan could adversely affect the North Island Compassion Club, which sells medicinal marijuana and other medications such as cannabis-infused oil to help people who live with cancer and other ailments.

"There's nothing in these new regulations that allow for compassion clubs," said NICC manager Ernie Yacub, noting government is considering allowing nurse practitioners to prescribe medical marijuana. "They would absolutely have to do that because doctors have been the problem. They've been the gatekeeper. They won't prescribe."

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Thank goodness for common sense. Stephen Harper's Conservative government is finally privatizing marijuana production.

Cannabis entrepreneurs have long been irked by unfair government competition. How are private-sector dealers supposed to operate in the marketplace if their customers have access to what federal health Minister Leona Aglukkaq justly calls taxpayer subsidized weed?

Aglukkaq's surprise announcement on Sunday claims the privatization move will affect only the 26,000 people in Canada who use marijuana for so-called medical purposes.

But astute Harper watchers will recognize that, once again, this far-sighted prime minister has identified a booming new Canadian resource industry that - in time - could rival the oilsands.

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'They were poor, aboriginal, drug addicted and they were not taken seriously'

Bias against the poor, drug-addicted sex workers in Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside led to a series of failures that allowed serial killer Robert Pickton to spend years hunting his victims unimpeded by police, a public inquiry has found. Commissioner Wally Oppal's 1,448-page final report, released Monday, chronicles years of mistakes that allowed Pickton to lure dozens of women to his farm in Port Coquitlam, with little interference from police and even less concern from the public.

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Only Companies Meeting Security Requirements Can Grow and Sell the Drug

Ottawa's decision to snuff its role in dispensing medical marijuana has ignited a debate over how the move will impact public health and safety.

A range of groups - including those representing law enforcement officials, physicians and medical cannabis advocates - were reacting Sunday after the federal health ministry announced it will stop producing and distributing medicinal pot in favour of opening the market to private companies.

The current program has allowed anyone with a government permit to grow it themselves, including in their own homes. But the Conservatives argue that with 26,000 permits handed out over the past decade, the system has become unwieldy and resulted in "unintended consequences."

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The federal government's proposed changes to the medical marijuana program would leave Canada's doctors in the lurch, dumping onto physicians the responsibility for a substance with very little clinical study, says the head of the Canadian Medical Association.

Health Canada announced Sunday it plans to change the way that people access medical marijuana, taking itself out of the production and distribution of the substance and opening up the commercial market to companies that meet "strict security requirements."

The concern is that physicians are now going to be asked to be the sole gatekeepers to the drug, Dr. Anna Reid, president of the Canadian Medical Association, told Postmedia News.

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Feds Want Change In Marijuana Laws

OTTAWA The federal government's proposed changes to the medical marijuana program would leave Canada's doctors in a lurch, dumping the responsibility for a substance with very little clinical evidence onto them, says the head of the Canadian Medical Association.

Health Canada announced Sunday that it plans to change the way that people access medical marijuana, taking itself out of the production and distribution of the substance and opening up the commercial market to companies that meet "strict security requirements."

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The debate on needle exchanges returned during last week's city council meeting, with a lot of the opposition focused on the needle exchange at AIDS Saskatoon on 33rd Street.

I have lived a couple of blocks from AIDS Saskatoon for the past 14 years and have seen the deterioration of the neighbourhood. People who lived in the area have decided to build in the suburbs and sold their homes to investors looking to rent. People who called the place home were replaced by people who drove through the neighbourhood periodically.

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TIMMINS - The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada are deeply concerned about the advancement of a regulatory proposal to reform the Medical Marijuana Access Program.

These reforms may place an unacceptable degree of responsibility on physicians, given the relative lack of evidence regarding the health benefits of medical marijuana.

If Health Canada no longer screens applications for use of medical marijuana, this essentially makes the physician the sole decision-maker.

Physicians should not be expected to prescribe medical marijuana unless it meets the regulatory requirement for prescription medication established under the federal Food and Drugs Act.

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