Canada Post to Deliver Medical Marijuana

Monday, June 28, 2004
Windsor Star (CN ON)
The Windsor Star
Media Release: John Caines - Canada Post

I want to respond to the June 21 editorial reprinted from the Ottawa Citizen, Medical Patients Have Become Victims Of The War On Drugs.

Canada Post has not refused to deliver medical marijuana to Canadians who have been licensed by Health Canada to use it.

Our interpretation of the regulations drafted by Health Canada was that it was impossible for Canada Post to meet the requirements to deliver medical marijuana.

Canada Post recently convened a meeting with Health Canada officials to address the issue and with a view to determining whether, in fact, we could provide the safe and secure transportation of medical marijuana.

Further review of Health Canada's requirements has resulted in agreement that Canada Post is now in a lawful position to deliver medical marijuana.

John Caines
Manager, National Media Relations
Canada Post- Ottawa

Re: Mailing Medical Marijuana, June 14

Friday, June 18, 2004
Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)

The Citizen is wrong that Canada Post has refused to deliver medical marijuana to Canadians who have been licensed by Health Canada to use it.

It was our interpretation of the regulations drafted by Health Canada that it was impossible for Canada Post to meet the requirements to deliver medical marijuana.

Canada Post recently convened a meeting with Health Canada officials to determine whether, in fact, we could provide the safe and secure transportation of medical marijuana.

Further review of Health Canada's requirements has resulted in agreement that Canada Post is in a lawful position to deliver medical marijuana.

John Caines - Ottawa,
Manager, Canada Post national media relations.

Acceptance Grows for Medical Pot

Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Grand Forks Gazette (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 Sterling Newspapers
by Shella Gardezi

In 1999, then mayor Brian Taylor declared that he would like Grand Forks to become the medical marijuana distribution capital of Canada. On June 18, he came one step closer to that goal.

Taylor, editor of the Cannabis Health Journal and a licensed grower of medical marijuana, has sent a shipment through Canada Post to an Ontario patient, Michel Aube. Aube suffers from chronic back pain caused by a fall from a cliff sustained on the job while working as a seismologist.

He turns to Taylor for marijuana because Ontario's provincial drug plan will not cover the expense. Right now, he has a eight-month agreement with Taylor who supplies the drug as part of a research project he is conducting.

Aube says marijuana is much more effective than the morphine he usually takes for pain relief.

"With morphine I'm always tired, I have trouble concentrating, I can't do anything, but with marijuana, it's completely the opposite," he says.

Taylor brought the package and its contents to the attention of Canada Post because a package went missing in transit. Another package sent by courier arrived a week late. Aube says this was frustrating because as the addressee he could not inquire about the package. Information is only given to the sender.

"I've had to go on and off of morphine a couple times already," he says. "It's not a party, I can tell you."

Taylor says private couriers will not ship marijuana. One of the reasons they gave him is that many shipments are routed through the United States where they can be subject to inspection by customs or drug enforcement officials.

Taylor says it is important to be able to ship medical marijuana openly in order to ensure that suppliers and patients have the cooperation of the post office.

"We just want to make sure that marijuana patients have the same rights as others," he says.

Aube agrees that it is important for people to be open about how marijuana is distributed.

"I want to get this cleared up so that people who can't necessarily get their marijuana supplied from Health Canada are able to go other places to get it," he says.

Taylor says he has kept in close touch with the RCMP over the years and has never had any difficulties locally with his licensed operation.

John Caines, national media relations manager for Canada Post, says the organization has met with Health Canada and it is able to ship marijuana strictly for medical reasons only.

Caines cautions that marijuana is still an illegal substance for all other purposes in Canada. He says Taylor has been advised of regulations regarding the handling of medical marijuana.

Post Office Refuses to Ship Legal Marijuana

Friday, June 4, 2004
Marci Surkes
The Ottawa Citizen

Health Canada gives OK, but Canada Post says No

Canada Post is refusing to ship medicinal marijuana between federally licensed growers and users despite having no basis for such a denial.

Michel Aube, a Health Canada-approved medicinal marijuana user who lives in Brockville has not received a recent shipment his licensed supplier sent him more than a month ago.

And, according to Canada Post spokesman John Caines, the package will not be delivered because it contains a controlled substance.

However, Health Canada spokesperson Catherine Saunders said that marijuana being transported between licensed growers and licensed recipients is permitted.

Such a shipment, she said, "is legal under the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act."

The cannabis was mailed from Brian Taylor in Grand Forks, B.C. on April 22, but never arrived at Mr. Aube's house. It was Mr. Taylor's second shipment to Mr. Aube, who suffers from chronic and severe back pain.

The first package did arrive from Canada Post, but it was battered and its odour easily detectable from a distance. Each package -- about one month's supply -- contained about three ounces of marijuana.

Mr. Aube was frustrated with the condition of the first package, but he did not file a complaint with Canada Post.

When the second package failed to arrive, he waited the 20-day minimum before contacting the Canada Post ombudsman.

"Nobody would tell me where my package was and I had to go back to 120 ml of morphine a day. I had been down to 30."

Without marijuana, Mr. Aube must resort to using morphine to ease suffering from the chronic and severe back pain he experiences due to soft tissue damage in the vertebrae.

Mr. Taylor's packages were tightly wrapped with duct tape, in compliance with the most recent Health Canada regulations for the shipment of medicinal marijuana.

Both packages were nondescript and stamped only with the three-letter abbreviation "CRI," for the Cannabis Research Institute, and a return address.

On his end, Mr. Taylor, the former mayor of Grand Forks, filed a lost item complaint with Canada Post in Vancouver detailing the precise contents of the missing package.

However, Mr. Taylor was warned by a Canada Post spokesperson that he should refrain from shipping medicinal marijuana through the Crown corporation because, if detected, it would be confiscated.

Mr. Caines added that while Mr. Taylor had a license to grow marijuana, he did not have a license to ship the substance through Canada Post because "Purolator is the only registered carrier of the substance."

But Ms. Saunders, of Health Canada, denied that claim.

She said there is no separate shipping license for growers and, according to the Regulations Amending the Marijuana Medical Access Regulations of December 2003, growers may ship using any courier -- including Canada Post -- so long as that courier meets three criteria: a means of tracking the package during transit, obtaining a signed acknowledgment of receipt by the holder of the authorization to possess it, and safekeeping of the package during transit.

Mr. Aube desperately wants to wean himself from morphine reliance, which has caused him to lose nearly 100 pounds due to a loss of appetite. In addition, while on morphine, he lives in a state of constant lethargy but is unable to sleep for longer than three hours a night.

"It's killing me. If I had to go to jail to be able to smoke pot instead of morphine then I would. I thought this problem was behind me, that I had finally found a way to get my pot easily and legally."

Canada Post said yesterday that if the package is located it will remain undeliverable under the corporation's non-mailable substances policy.

The package was scanned with its tracking number in the Grand Forks post office, but subsequently disappeared from the system. It was not rerouted to Canada Post's undeliverable mail facility and the corporation has no knowledge of police confiscation.

Mr. Taylor shipped a replacement dosage to Mr. Aube this week using a private courier that cost nearly three times the price of Canada Post, the primary reason he used Canada Post in the first place.

Posties Won't Ship Medical Pot

Friday, June 4, 2004
By Mary Nersessian
Globe and Mail - Canada

Canada Post has been refusing to deliver medicinal marijuana to licensed users and it is unclear whether they will agree to change their policy.

Officials from Health Canada discussed the policy with the crown corporation Friday after learning that the post office was sticking to a regulation that treats any kind of marijuana shipment as verboten.

Talks are to continue into next week, though a spokesman at Canada Post acknowledged Friday that he did not know whether the old policy remains in force in the meantime.

“We have had some consultations with Health Canada and we don't know where we stand on this at this time,” Canada Post spokesperson John Caines said, “We have a Canada Post Act and we have to abide by regulations.”

Mr. Caines said that, as recently as the middle of this week, shipping any form of marijuana was against Canada Post policy because it was considered “an illegal substance.” He could not say what the current policy was.

This is not the first time they have had discussions to resolve this issue, Health Canada spokesperson Catherine Saunders said, although she was unable to specify when they spoke last or why discussions were prompted again Friday.

Health Canada permits the shipment of medicinal marijuana if it is sent from an authorized producer to a licensed user by means of a traceable shipment such as a courier or registered mail, said Ms. Saunders.

Canadian AIDS Society National Programs Consultant Lynne Belle-Isle is outraged that there isn't already a resolution.

“My first reaction was one of shock because yet another barrier is being put up for people trying to access marijuana,” she told globeandmail.com on Friday, hours after announcing the society's new position statement on the therapeutic use of marijuana for people with HIV/AIDS.

The statement said that the Canadian AIDS Society “recognizes the need to address the remaining barriers to access to cannabis for therapeutic purposes through Health Canada's Marijuana Medical Access Regulations,” the statement said.

“I'm hoping that Health Canada and Canada Post will work something out,” Ms. Belle-Isle said, adding that the terminally ill living in remote areas are most likely to be affected. She said that people with HIV/AIDS may be unable to afford different shipping methods, such as couriers, because “most of these people are already living on disability and have limited incomes.”

Toronto-based microbiologist Enrico Mandarino, who is on the Canadian AIDS Society board of directors, and has been using marijuana medicinally for the past three years to deal with anorexia, has no problem finding marijuana in a major city.

But if he lived in a remote area and Canada Post refused to ship it to him, “It would just further frustrate me around the barriers to access,” Mr. Mandarino said. The marijuana helps to increase his appetite, decrease his nausea and stabilize weight loss.

“This is unacceptable, the whole idea [of legalizing medicinal marijuana] was to make it more accessible for medicinal users,” Ms. Belle-Isle said.