Canada Tells Docs to Lower Medicinal Marijuana Doses

[high as hell]

http://www.mapinc.org/norml/v07/n738/a08.htm

Health Canada has been contacting doctors who prescribe medical marijuana for their government-approved patients, advising them to keep the dosages low.

Some users say that not only violates doctor-patient confidentiality, it's also wrong for bureaucrats to make judgments about the medical needs of people they've never seen.

"A person's medication should be between him and his doctor," said Tony Adams, 60, a medical marijuana user in Victoria.

"There shouldn't be some bureaucrat in Ottawa that's never met me. Everybody has different needs for medications."

Adams, a licenced user who's been smoking seven grams of marijuana daily, recently applied to Health Canada to increase the dose to 10 grams, with his doctor's authorization. Official approval from Ottawa is needed so that Adam can legally grow the appropriate number of marijuana plants, set by Health Canada at five plants for each daily gram.

But a program official in Ottawa challenged Adams' doctor in a telephone call, saying most patients need no more than five grams. Adams, who has severe arthritis and degenerative disc disease, later received a new licence for just five grams a day.

"I'm just really pissed off about the whole situation. ... I need to get to the bottom of this."

Similarly, Alison Myrden in Burlington, Ont., says her doctor was challenged by Health Canada bureaucrats about her 20- to 28-gram daily dose.

"They asked to lower it more than once, and my doctor and I both refused," said Myrden, 43, who uses marijuana for multiple sclerosis and another painful condition. Her message to Health Canada: "Back off - leave our doctors alone."

The department's recent campaign to keep doses to five grams or less includes postings on its website referring to external surveys and studies indicating most medical users need only one to three grams daily, "whether it is taken orally, or inhaled or a combination of both."

Five Grams

Another posting indicates more than 85 per cent of Canada's licenced users take five grams or less each day.

And a fact sheet mailed to doctors warns that "an elevated daily dosage of more than five grams may increase risks with respect to the effect on cardiovascular, pulmonary and immune systems and psychomotor performance, as well as potential drug dependency."

Health Canada also sent a letter recently to the Canadian Medical Association advising doctors about appropriate daily amounts.

A spokesman for the department said dosage decisions are always left to doctors.

"Occasionally, Health Canada contacts physicians to verify or clarify some of the information provided in the application," Renee Bergeron said.

"As part of this discussion, Health Canada provides the opportunity for medical practitioners to obtain more information about the program, including information available on the website with regards to daily amount."

Recent efforts to restrict dosage levels may be related to concerns about criminal activity. Last fall, for example, the department received a letter of complaint from someone in Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl's riding of Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon, B.C.

"The constituent expresses his concern that an individual in his neighbourhood is cultivating a large number of marijuana plants for medical purposes, thereby potentially endangering his family and the neighbourhood in general," says Nov. 20 memo to Health Minister Tony Clement, obtained under the Access to Information Act.

The memo describes the department's efforts to reduce dosages, and says "the initial reaction from physicians ... has been positive and it may indirectly have an impact on the number of marijuana plants produced."

[Medicine Al]

What the hell has happened to the Canadian Government, to cause them to willfully second guess the very doctors they license? Do they know nothing of the Hippocratic Oath? Or are they saying that sometimes its better to have the local constable decide if someones plants are too threatening to warrant their medicinal intake?

Or perhaps the pressure put on Canada by the USA and its brilliant federal autocrats, who value only hysteria and the warped perceptions of the right-wing, is beginning to manifest itself in the usually saner northlands? In the USA an MD can prescribe opiates, barbituates, psycho active compounds, and boner pills that make you go blind, and no government official will ever be heard to give a care...but if they prescribe even an FDA approved substitute(marinol), the Doctor will have their license to prescribe removed by the DEA...smart!

Please Canada, don't start acting as ignorant as the USA!

[JollyRoger227]

Doctors are well educated people, who serve people to make them be well and to ease pain.

How dare the government try to decide what is best for a patient, some people have higher tolerances towards pain medicine.. and I know for a fact you can develop a weed tolerance.

Silly Canadian government, but damn I wish I had a doctors note to smoke 20+ grams of herb a day