14 - North Shore News — Sunday, August 13, 2000

Victory sc

Patrick Basham
Contributing Writer.

DESPITE Canadians
exhibiting a collective
clear-mindedness on
contemporary society's
most emotive issue,
drug policy reform has

- passed without appro-
priate interest from pol-
icymakers.

No longer.

On July 31, the argument
that doctors may prescribe
marijuana as a medical weat-
ment for seriously or terminal-
ly ill patients (so-called med-
ical marijuana) received sup-
port in a seminal judicial deci-

_sion. The Ontario Court of
Appeal, the province’s highest
court, upheld a 1997 Ontario
Superior Court ruling that the
prohibition against medical
Marijuana infringed the rights
of Mr. Terry Parker, an epilep-
tic, under Section 7 ef the
Charter of Rights and
Freedoms.

“The court declared the

Lavett

wet

marijuana possession section
of this country’s Controlled
Drugs and Substances Act to
be unconstitutional as it fails
to recognize that marijuana
can be used for medicinal pur-
poses. The court has instruct-
ed the federal government
that it has 12 months to
rewrite the law to allow for
medical marijuana or marijua-

ossession will be effective-
ly decriminalized.

The court's judgement

reflected what's been conclu-
sively and repeatedly demon-

strated: marijuana serves as a
tremendously helpful appetite
stimulant or pain reliever to
patients atflicred with epilepsy,
AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, or
multiple sclerosis. Prior to the
ruling, only 50 Canadians
were legally entitled to smoke
Marijuana. Now, an estimated
150,000 people in Ontario
atone could benefit from the
medical use of marijuana.
Opposition stems trom a
combination of ignorance and
well-intentioned, if misplaced,
moralism which argues that
medical marijuana promotes
drug experimentation and
abuse. Suffice it to say, both
the historical and scientific evi-
dence demonstrate otherwise.
The standard government
line remains that there’s no
official evidence marijuana
helps case patients’ symptoms.
After all, as U.S. deputy drug
caar Dr. Don Vereen noted,
“Smoked marijuana has not
been tested (by the govern-
ment).” Fortunately, judicial
wisdom and medical expertise
are overcoming such political

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intransigence north and south
of the border.

As Dr. Jerome Kassirer,
editor of The New England
Journal of Medicine, has writ-
ten, “Thousands of patients
with cancer, AEDS, and other
diseases report they have
obtained striking relief trom
these devastating ssmptoms
by smoking manjuana.” He
suggested that, “The argu-
ment that it would be a signal
to the voung that ‘manjuana
is OR is specious.”

This view retlects a medical
history dating to 2727 BC —
the first recorded listing, in
Chinese pharmacopoeia, of
cannabis as medicine.

Revealingly, North
America’s prohibition against
marijuana occurred against the
advice of the medical commu-
nity. More recently, in 1988
Judge Francis Young, the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency's
own administrative-law judge,
determined that marijuana
had a clearly established med-

red for sensible drug poi

ical use and, therefore, should
be reclassified as a prescriptive
drug. Taking a page out of
the Canadian playbook, the
U.S, government took no
ACO,

The therapeutic benetits of
smoking manjuana are Numer-
ous, hence a 199] Harvard
Univeriity survey's finding
that 44 percent of oncologists
recommended marijuana to
patients suflering from
chemotherapy -induced nau-
sea. A 1997 National
Institutes of Health panel con-
cluded that smoking marijua-
na may help treat a number of
conditions, including nausea
and pain.

The so-called “wasting
syndrome” that afflicts those
in the latter stages of AIDS
may be arrested through mari-
juana’s ability t stimulate the
appetite. There's also consid-
erable anecdotal evidence that
marijuana relieves painful
symptoms of multiple sclerosis
and spinal cord injuries.

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icy

Yes, there’s the potential :
tor harm trom smoking mari-
juana, especially respiratory
damage. These long-term
effects are irrelevant, however,
toa person who's suffering a
slow, terribly painful death.

What's s missing here isn’t
public opinion. Most people
agree that marijuana-smoking |
sick pgople should be treated
as patients, rather than as ©
caminals. According to a
recent COMPAS poll, 92 per
cent of Canadians believe
medical marijuana use should
not be a criminal offence. :
Despite popular approval and
judicial progress, our legisla-
tion remains both anachronis-
tic and cruel. To continue to
process, charge and convict ==:
people for medicinal use of.
marijuana is a blatant waste of
limited resources. The law
must be changed.

— Patrick Basham i

Director of the Social Affairs

Centre at The Fraser Institute,
an economic research group.

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