Howdy folks!

Not sure how many Canucks are on this wonderful site, but with all this hullabaloo about Colorado's and Washington's new regulations (ps. congrats guys!! ), we can't forget that Health Canada just announced changes to the Marijuana Medical Access Regulations (or as Health Canada spells it, "marihuana." ) and Health Canada is accepting public comments on these changes! (More on where to send comments below)

Current law can be read up on here: http://lois-laws.justice.../SOR-2001-227/index.html

Proposed changes can be read here: http://www.gazette.gc.ca...12-15/html/reg4-eng.html

Now, just for a quick overview, the current legislation binds Health Canada to provide medical marijuana for licensed patients. Patients are allowed to grow their own if they so choose, but require a grower's licence. If the patient doesn't want to grow, they can obtain their medicine from a licensed grower who is growing for them. This style of regulation has kept the market value for this medicine pretty low, as it is basically subsidized. Health Canada dos a lot of the paper-pushing for this system to work: reviews licences, tracks growers, inspects grow operations, and generally keeps track of the whole process. Fortunately, this means that the medicine is kept at about $1.80-$5/gram. This is important for patients with debilitating medical issues, such as ALS, cancer survivors, MS etc. because these people are more likely to be in poverty because they are unable to work.

The proposed changes will eliminate much of Health Canada's role in medical marijuana. These changes will void all grower licenses, meaning that patients cannot grow for themselves nor may they assign another person to grow for them. The new regulations would allow community-based dispensaries to operate under guidelines set out by Health Canada, basically a store-front business. Patients will receive prescriptions from their doctors and then take the prescription to the dispensary, where they will become a client of the dispensary. Health Canada estimates that these changes would increase the cost of medical marijuana from $1.80-$5/gram to $8.80/gram in 2014, when the proposed regulations will take effect.

One problem the Canadian Medical Association (CSA) has with this is that Health Canada has not provided doctors with through list of benefits and effects of medical marijuana. The CSA says that the government is abdicating its responsibility to regulate a drug. Head of the CSA, Dr. Anna Reid, says that, "Really, it's akin to asking us doctors to write prescriptions while being blindfolded." (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/12/17/ns-medical-marijuana-user.html)

Other changes include adding edibles and extracts to the list of items considered medical marijuana, hospital workers would be able to possess and administer medical marijuana to patients, and allowing the homeless to access this medicine as long as they are registered at a shelter or hostel. These are many more changes as you can read in the links above.

Probably the most important thing to take away from this is that Health Canada is taking public comments on these changes to inform their final decision. I strongly suggest that if you are a Canadian and have any opinion on medical marijuana whatsoever, submit a short essay on your reactions to these changes! If anything this will show the government that there are people with opinions on this important subject of public health.

Where and how to send your comments:

"Interested persons may make representations concerning the proposed Regulations within 75 days (until 2012-02-2 after the date of publication of this notice. All such representations must cite the Canada Gazette, Part Ⅰ, and the date of publication of this notice, and be addressed to the Bureau of Medical Marihuana Regulatory Reform, Controlled Substances and Tobacco Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Health Canada, Address Locator: AL3503D, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0K9 (fax: 613-941-7240; email: consultations-marihuana@hc-sc.gc.ca)."

I, for one, have already read through both the current and proposed legislation and have started a draft response. Who's with me!?

Health canada is made up by spineless people who will lie through their teeth to canadian citizens every chance they get..so this comes as no surprise to me that they wish to now take away rights to grow your own medicine.

Having to deal with them on a professional level was nothing but a headache for me. I will contact them and tell them what I think but it wont be nice.

Excellent Jamie! And sorry to hear about your Health Canada woes. What else can you expect from a Conservative government? However! When you do submit your comments, make sure that it's a professional refutation of these changes because otherwise this will inevitably create hostility and further misconceptions about the whole subject. Since their changes are so blatantly wrong, we must use logic against them!

health Canada, as well as other Canadian regulatory health bodies that I have dealt with, are a bureaucratic farce. I don't know if they outright "lie", it's just that their version of the "truth" is always some pussified, watered down version of truth that attempts to satisfy all sides, and doesn't really satisfy anyone. The problem is I don't think Health Canada thinks they are "lying". They believe in their bureaucratic crap. Health Canada doesn't just take "middle ground" when it comes to issues, they will always take the extreme cautious side.... and spend incredible amounts of money to ensure their absurd bureaucratic rules remain in effect.

I suppose it's better than most of the USA, where they'll just put a boot in your ass. But now that states are beginning to legalize weed, we will start to see the wussiness and inferiority of Canada. I do not believe that Health Canada, nor anyone with power in this society, has the balls to just be pro legalization.... even if that is the right thing, and that is what the public wants. The Canadian way is the "safe" way. Unfortunately, progress does not get made with the safe way.

This rant is not just about Health Canada, but has to do with my frustrations with my perception of the society I live in. I feel we are raised to be too safe, and in so doing, we live castrated lives where sure, we may get in to less trouble, but we're also a lot more afraid, and unequipped to face new situations, should they arise. Health Canada will just take whatever position they feel will give them the least grief, and of course, enforce whatever rules they feel they can make money from.

They also have really stupid people working for them. I cant even begin to explain the dumbasses they have woring here at Fraser Health, which is basically just the localized branch of Health Canada for the lower mainland of BC.

My health inspector last year was one of the dumbest idiots. The landlord of the kitched I was renting ended up taking them to court over so much lost money due to these people..like thousand and thousands of dollars in renovations they were telling her she had to do, only later to find out none of it was true.

It became clear to me they have their own agenda that conflicts with providing any real health food products and beyond that they seem to just hire the stupidest people possible. I mean I dont get how you can be this stupid..but my health inspector was a real piece of work. I constantly wanted to ask her what the hell kind of school she went to.

Health Canada wants to ban garlic supplements okay. Enough said.

hmmm, that is a higher level of stupidity than I have encountered. But basically, yeah, for some reason Health Canada is on this mission to make everything "safe" by banning everything.... unless you jump through their expensive, unnecessary hoops. The garlic thing for example. And in so doing, making good things less available to the public who choose to buy certain things.

Apoc, I agree entirely. We are coddled and I think it has something to do with control. Creating fear over everything isn't healthy. The war on drugs for example. The government (Canada and the US) still argue that smoking one joint will turn you into a heroin addict. Not true!! The likelihood of that happening considering the amount of people that smoke weed regularly, we would have heroin addicts everywhere! The Reagan era "just say no" campaign is a perfect example of this scaremongering. (Side note: there's a hilarious cartoon starring all these 1980s cartoon characters warning about the dangers of weed. Check it out, if only to see TMNT and Alf hanging out. ) Same goes with a million other things. Any one remember the killer bee scare? Or the War on Terrorism? (Nothing but justified racism in my mind.) The government likes to keep us afraid because they like to appear as our only saviours. Wrong-o!

As for Health Canada, I've never had to deal with any one from there, but I don't doubt any bureaucratic red tape. (Garlic supplements, really? Maybe if the garlic was from China. I've heard there's a lot of pesticide use with garlic there.) It takes 10 weeks to get a license to possess. They didn't even do any inspections between 2008-2011. (I checked out their Access to Information page, some one requested the accounts of inspections, came back "no records exist" So what the heck is MMAP doing exactly? Sitting around and getting paid?

Regardless, patients still need to have reasonable access to their medicine. Privatizing the weed might work towards legalization, but these vulnerable people still should have some lower income option.