Vancouver’s trendy Yaletown neighborhood saw its first dispensary for medical marijuana opened on July 14, as medical cannabis advocates claim that Health Canada is implementing “drastic plans” to restrict access across Canada. The new facility, Yaletown Medical, located at #153-1020 Mainland Street, invited media and the general public in for tours on July 14.
“Dispensaries like Yaletown Medical serve a vital need for both patients and doctors in our community,” medical marijuana activist and dispensary spokesman Jacob Hunter told the Tyee. “Especially in the downtown core, many patients do not have access to a vehicle and their illness precludes long commutes.
These community based dispensaries are not only their best option, they are often a patient's only option. A person in need of medication should not be expected to travel across town, or wait for weeks while medication arrives via the mail. Further, the proposal by Health Canada to force all medical marijuana through the mail ignores the reality that in this country legal medical marijuana is often seized, stolen or otherwise prevented from getting to patients. These community based dispensaries are absolutely vital.”
Health Canada's proposed restrictions to the medical marijuana program have drawn criticism from patients and advocates across Canada. Critics say the changes seek to remove personal and designated production licenses, as well as patient identification, while forcing patients to purchase from a small number of commercial suppliers via the mail. Currently, patients have the option to purchase from Health Canada's sole commercial contractor, but less than 25 per cent of registered patients do so. Reasons cited by patients include low quality, low medical efficacy, lack of strain selection, and high prices.
“There is no question that medical marijuana access is under attack in this country. Health Canada is drastically restricting its medical marijuana program in outright defiance of successful constitutional challenges” Hunter told the Tyee.
“We have also seen evidence in the media that Health Canada is ignoring court decisions which favour dispensaries and pressuring municipalities to shut them down. These attacks on medical marijuana defy public opinion, they defy court decisions, and they defy the evidence on the efficacy of dispensaries. As a patient, I am thankful for activists like those at Yaletown Medical who are willing to stand up to these Draconian attacks.”
Tom Sandborn covers health policy and labour beats for The Tyee. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos@infinet.net.
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zalm
1 year ago
time to clean up your language, Tom
Medical marijuana isn't medication, so don't call it that. And the users are not patients. They are sufferers who find some relief from marijuana use. And I very much doubt that any doctors find the dispensaries serve a "vital need" in our community. I doubt any doctor is convinced of the efficacy of marijuana use, but in the interests of caring and science are willing to tolerate its harmful side effects in order to give comfort to their patients, without knowing the outcome.
You will find no doctor actively encouraging medical marijuana use as an alternative to therapies with known outcomes and side effects, for they would immediately fall afoul of the College, which has stated several times it is neither convinced nor supportive of marijuana use as a medically-supported alternative to known medical therapies. Doctors who permit medical marijuana use to occur within the guidelines of their practice with patients have a very specific list of requirements to follow - anything else is outside practice, and they are at pains to tell their patients so.
All this is because the current method is no way to practice medicine, and too few studies and research have been (or is being) conducted into harms and benefits of whatever components of marijuana affect the body.
Some people who use medical marijuana dispensaries are fighting a political war, and making it hard on people who truly have no alternatives, but just want to lay low and fight their health battles. There's no conspiracy, folks, although if you smoke too much, it might seem so....
pianosaurus rex
1 year ago
not exactly the case here
There are many who would disagree with the assertions in the posting above. Here is a list that may surprise; advocates for the use of this substance in the health system along with advocacy for decriminalization of personal use without penalty:
The American Bar Association, Consumers Union, The American Public Health Association, B’nai B’rith, the National Council of Churches, the Governing Board of the American Medical Asoociation, the American Academy of Paediatrics, William F. Buckley, Jr., Art Linkletter, Ann Landers, the National Education Association, and the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse.
This list was published in 1977.
Marijuana is the least debilitating of all common intoxicants and has never accounted for a substantiated drug death. It does not cause brain damage, sterility, impotence, insanity or drug addictions. Pharmacologically aspirin causes more problems…..Socially and medically, alcohol and tobacco are considerably more dangerous.
There are approximately 112 different chemicals produced when marijuana is smoked; the only one studied at length is the tongue- twisting delta-9- tetrahydrocannabinol familiarly known as THC.
Marijuana gives rise to unique chemical and psychological effects; different things to different people as no two metabolisms will treat this alkaloid the same way; hallucinogen, relaxant, tranquilizer, appetite stimulant, or intoxicant.
Psychotics or users beset with anxieties, or other serious mental instabilities, or users who may suffer an underlying, and yet unnoticed psychosis, may suffer adverse effects from use, but these people would suffer the effects of any drug use, legal or otherwise.
With the exception of such “bummer trips” the physiological and psychological effects of marijuana are considered minor in the world of psychoactive drugs.
As far back as the year 2737 B.C., the Chinese used the substance as an aesthetic. The early Egyptians used a tincture for sore eyes. Modern scientists today are experimenting with use of this product for glaucoma relief as it relieves the pressure from the back of the retina.
References for medical use can be found in the Old Testament and the writings of Marco Polo.
Queen Victoria’s personal physician studied this substances properties for thirty years and used another marijuana tincture for her menstrual cramps which were said to be considerable and un-bearable. He also recommended use for migraines, cramps, senile insomnia, epileptiod states, and certain depressions.
pianosaurus rex
1 year ago
cont'd
In 1860 the Ohio Medical Society found this product to be useful in the treatment of tetanus, rheumatic pain, asthma, post-partum psychoses, convulsions, gonorrhoea, and chronic bronchitis. Also it was found that this product produced a more natural sleep without interference of the action of internal organs, and was preferred over the stronger opium compounds of the day.
Literally hundreds of scholarly articles were written on cannabis’ medical properties between the years 1839-1900; various cannabis preparations in fluid extracts were readily available without prescription from Parke-Davis, Squibb and Lilly. Listed in the American Pharmacopoeia 1850-1942.
Western medicine lost interest in this product around the 1900 mark when research produced synthesized morphine and barbiturates manufactured by guess who?.......the drug companies.
The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 while not prohibiting it use and a medicant nor denying its value as such, made it difficult and unpopular to describe. Removed for the lexicon of the American pharmacology in 1942.
Marijuana has been discovered for possible medical use in the treatment of symptoms for; glaucoma, loss of appetite (especially important for people suffering from HIV AIDS treatments) anorexia nervosa, heart attack, migraines headaches, hypertension, epileptic seizure, insomnia. Medically marijuana appears to be remarkably safe with addiction and toxicity well below that of aspirin.
In the 1920’s repression of marijuana gained momentum when the head of the newly formed Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger was looking to justify its existence. The Federal Marijuana Tax act of 1937 outlawed non-medical use successfully without providing a single shred of evidence to support Anslinger’s claims. By 1946 almost all of the states had restrained the “creeping menace” of marijuana.
Excerpts from;
The Drug Users. The Psychopharmacology of Turning On;
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/48/1/171.abstract
Recreational Drugs
http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/recreationaldrugs/default.htm
Regarding some of the other comments, considering the extreme shortage of GP's in this country they can pretty much tell patients whatever they like without reprimand from the College; I know of many a GP that advocates the use of this product.
The debate surrounding this substance was had some 40-50 years ago. Anyone who chooses to use this product is doing so now, the law notwithstanding. That revelation results in making the laws surrounding this product a complete ass.
pianosaurus rex
1 year ago
4th para
should be " its use as a"