Canada needs patients first medical pot policy

Adam Greenblatt, The Montreal Gazette:

Health Canada is overhauling the Marijuana Medical Access Program in response to concerns about "exploitation by criminal elements." During consultations with Montreal medical cannabis dispensaries in August, Health Canada indicated it is seeking to adopt a "more traditional regulatory role" in what it now refers to as a "marketplace." The plan is to privatize medical cannabis and license commercial producers, who must comply with strict protocols in order to qualify.

Which is positive, prudent and even praiseworthy, but only when contrasted against a decade of poorly planned fecklessness.

Health Canada goes to great lengths to mention in its "proposed improvements" that this is "not the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana." This effort to eschew legalization as a sensible policy option is cynical and sophistic.

To make sure this scheme is not some form of de facto legalization, the federal government plans to phase out permits that allow patients to tend their own marijuana gardens or designate a caregiver to do so. (And thanks to the omnibus crime bill, if you are convicted of growing medical cannabis without a licence from Health Canada, you will go directly to jail.)

This does not bode well for patients and does not sit well with Canadians. Revoking and recriminalizing these supply options is a punitive measure, devoid of compassion and decency.

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