The Great Green North

By David Silverberg
for High Times - August/September 2004
(Link to original article unavailable)

Canadian medi-schwag is forcing patients who don't grow to score kind bud on the black market.

Jari Dvorak hands me a Health Canada joint. Afflicted with HIV since 1996, Dvorak would rather smoke black-market pot, but I insist on trying out the government product.

The smoke begins to swirl around the room in his downtown Toronto apartment, and after a couple of tokes an ashy aftertaste invades my mouth. I almost feel embarrassed exhaling the nastiness into his living room. Dvorak spots my noticeable wince and says, "This is schwag--just pure garbage."

He pulls out a paper with several numbers on it. Dvorak explains that he and his friends rated the government pot during their first session, using such criteria as buzz, taste and smell. Out of 10, the average score was 3.

Showing me the Ziploc bag of shake weed, Dvorak insults the physical makeup: The pot is ground up in a fine powder, mixed with stems and assorted debris. He slams the taste: "It's like smoking tar."

Granted, medication doesn't always satisfy the taste buds, but Dvorak also noticed that the prescribed pot didn't benefit him medically. On disability since 1998, he needs potent bud to stimulate his appetite and to help him keep food down. He doesn't need government-grown schwag that costs $150 Canadian per 30 grams.

"After all the announcements of major progress, I was disappointed," Dvorak says, "because the product wasn't good enough. It was horrible."

Dvorak's not alone. Of the 92 approved government users receiving pot from Health Canada (as opposed to the 542 licensed medi-growers), 29 either returned it or canceled their orders. Activists, doctors and lawyers are calling the government program a failure, and they insist Health Canada improve the regulations and the supply.

With $3.6 million invested in the five-year pot contract. "this is a financial scandal of the highest order," asserts Philippe Lucas, director of Canadians for Safe Access.

Health Canada is scrambling to calm the naysayers. The agency's response to all the complaints and recommendations took several months, but now changes are being tabled that would fine-tune the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations (MMAR) -- a move closely scrutinized by the patients, players and even potential businessmen looking for a piece of Canada's medi-pot pie.

When Americans look north, they see hockey, snow, national health insurance and liberal drug policies. Canada has been compared to the Netherlands, and Forbes called pot "Canada's most valuable agricultural product - bigger than wheat, timber or cattle."

The Drug War touches Canadian politics but doesn't overrun them, and nothing like the Rockefeller laws exist in the land of elk and multicolored money. So Canada's pot program is another example of forward-thinking progressive politics, eh?

The government's been reluctant from the beginning," says Alan Young, a law professor at the University of Toronto who rightfully claims that he turned the Canadian government into a drug dealer. Young took Health Canada to court several times since 1997, and in 2001 forced the bureaucrats to release the MMAR.

"From the moment the program started, Health Canada has had no enthusiasm and made many attempts to destroy it," says Young, who calls it "planned obsolescence." Take the category controversy, for example. For Category 3 applicants, who suffer from ailments that are neither life-threatening nor listed in Category 2, signed declarations from two specialists are required.

Category 2 illnesses include multiple sclerosis, AIDS/HIV infection, cancer, severe arthritis, epilepsy and spinal-cord injuries, and these applicants also need approval from a specialist. Category 1 applicants must be terminally ill (have less than a year to live); they only need a doctor's approval and statement that "all conventional treatments have been tried or considered."

Hunting for specialists has proven more elusive than finding an MD who prescribes medical pot. Young says the specialist requirements do more harm than good, effectively denying medical pot to patients hard-pressed to find two willing specialists.

Health Canada's mismanagement forced the resignation of a Toronto doctor on its advisory committee. In a letter to then-Health Minister Anne McLellan, Dr. Greg Robinson explained the reasons for his sudden departure: "Doctors are being called upon by Health Canada to be pharmacists and dispense medicinal marijuana from their offices at their own personal and professional risk.... In the end, patients are left with no route through which medicinal marijuana can be distributed."

Prairie Plant Systems (PPS) has been contracted by the government to grow medi-pot, which is then sent to doctors, who distribute it to patients. According to the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), this distribution system compromises the safety of medical premises. The CMA warns its members that they prescribe marijuana at their own risk.

Lucas, who also runs the Vancouver Island Compassion Society (VICS), would prefer to see medi-pot made available through compassion clubs like his. "Health Canada will never catch up to compassion clubs with the way they're going," Lucas says. "This is frustrating because we're trying to help sick people, and we're being ignored by people who are afraid we're going to steal their jobs."

Lucas is quick to show off a photo that contrasts federally grown pot with the kind BC buds cultivated at the VICS Cannabis Research Institute, which was raided by the RCMP in May. When VICS tested the schwaggy-looking gov-pot, they discovered the THC level was only 5.1 percent, not the 10.2 percent claimed by Health Canada.

How can Health Canada stand by a product so widely reviled that each order includes a return form? "We've received feedback from the initial users of PPS's product, and we're exploring ways to physically prepare the pot differently," says Health Canada spokeswoman Catherine Saunders, adding that the Canadian government "is committed to marijuana for medical purposes."

Jim Wakeford, the first Canadian to receive a medical-pot exemption, insists on "whole-plant medicine" as opposed to the shake mix distributed by the Feds. "That stuff is unfit for human consumption," he says.

"Health Canada has an obligation to provide safe, clean, affordable, high-quality strains of indicas and sativas for medical use. They should expand the licensing program to experienced growers and should help exemptees and growers connect with each other directly."

Wakeford, who's afflicted with AIDS, says that time is survival for many sick marijuana users, and adds that finding a grower can be difficult. "Sure, Health Canada is now selling marijuana, but I wouldn't consider that marijuana," he says.

Meanwhile, Health Canada has given the green tight to a plan to sell pot in pharmacies. A pilot project in British Columbia will parallel a year-old program in the Netherlands, where participating pharmacies stock marijuana for sate to approved patients without a doctor's prescription. Organizers hope to boost registration, while critics like Lucas expect a deeper monopoly for Health Canada marijuana.

The medi-pot news north of the border has generated optimism among activists. "We have the program intact, with Health Canada making rumblings about improving the MMAR," Young maintains. "Canada's sitting at a unique point in history. Now it's time to wait and see."

Already, several corporate ventures have sprouted since the MMAR took effect, including Warren Eugene's Toronto-based Amigula Inc.. Eugene, a millionaire formerly in the online casino business, decided to buy half of Medical Cannabis Inc. after an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling tweaked the MMAR to allow licensed growers to cultivate medi-pot for more than one exemptee. With 10,000 applicants so far, Amigula is aiming, says Eugene, to "put Health Canada out of business."

Young also plans to get in the game with Cannasat, a company he helped found. He's assembling a clinical-trial team and is working with a government contractor to produce strains that "demonstrate medical efficacy." Cannasat will later seek drug approval for an herbal cannabis product using an alternative delivery system.

Bayer has teamed up with GW Pharmaceuticals to distribute Sativex, a cannabis mouth spray, to the Canadian market. Sativex benefits multiple-sclerosis sufferers who want the medicine without the smoke inhalation. Health Canada has yet to approve the drug.

While a stigma stilt hovers over marijuana in Canada (reefer madness infects many doctors, and a federal initiative allowed a task force to dismantle grow ops), recent surveys offer hope.

An lpsos-Reid poll of 1,000 Canadians found that 55 percent of respondents don't believe smoking marijuana should be a crime - a hot topic in the wake of a decriminalization bill that remains on the back burner in the House of Commons.

Back at Jari Dvorak's apartment, we decide to smoke a joint of my black-market bud. I watch him closely after the first few puffs. I notice a smile sneak onto his face, and when he exhales, the sweet odor encircles our heads.

"This is good stuff," he says. "If only Health Canada could give us this kind of weed," Dvorak puffs again.

"I'm not worried," he smiles. "This is just the beginning."