You
Call This Reform?
Canada Backtracks and Babysteps on Marijuana
By Preston Peet
for DrugWar.com
posted October 18, 2003
Will Canadian Patients and even recreational
users Ever Get This Medicine sans hassle?
Despite US Drug Czar John Walters' recent
assertions that Canada is "the
one place in the hemisphere where things are going the wrong (way)
rapidly," Canada is moving towards
stricter marijuana policies. After
a summer of defacto legalized marijuana use lead to no apparent
increase in anarchy, violence or crime on Canadian streets, the
Ontario Appeals Court effectively
recriminalized recreational use on October 7, 2003, while
ordering that the Canadian government insure patients can more
easily obtain their medicinal marijuana by
allowing businesses and individuals to grow their own for
medical use. At the same time, Canada's
proposed "decrim" bill seeks to further tighten rather
than relax Canada's pot laws.
"This case is not about the social and
recreational use of marijuana, but is about those with the medical
need to use marijuana to treat symptoms of serious medical conditions,"
ruled
the Ontario Appeals Court in Hitzig et al. v. Her Majesty the
Queen, pointing out that there is "a strong body of opinion
supporting the claim that marijuana offers some individuals inestimable
relief from a variety of debilitating symptoms associated with
serious long-term illness such as AIDS, cancer and epilepsy."
Doing
away with portions of Ottawa's Marijuana Medical Access Regulations
(MMAR), the Court noted that the stricken portions had been
forcing sick people to go to the black market for their legal
supply of medicinal marijuana. "Exposing these individuals
to these risks does not advance the objective of public health
and safety," the Court ruled in its unanimous 3-0 ruling.
"Rather, it is contrary to it. Equally, driving business
to the black market is contrary to better narcotic drug control."
But as the Court is telling the government
that it needs to insure a safe supply of medical marijuana for
those patients who qualify, there are troubling reports from those
few patients who have already been supplied marijuana from the
government of adverse reactions, making some literally ill. Complaints
range from heaches, having to smoke 4 to 6 times as much as normal
to get the desired effect, that the marijuana has a "sticks
and stems appearance" and when the almost unrollable
powder is finally twisted into a spliff it tastes foul. Three
out of 10 to so far receive Health Canada-supplied pot want their
money back. To top it off, the marijuana the Canadian government
has been growing in the Flin-Flon mine intended to supply those
patients turns out to have
been grown in a highly polluted area, with toxic heavy metals
turning up in the grown plants. As Canadians
for Safe Access puts it, their own independent tests of Health
Canada marijuana being grown in the Flin-Flon mine showed results
"indicating elevated levels of heavy metals such as arsenic
and lead."
"The Ontario Court of Appeal ruling
in Hitzig, while it looks good on paper for medical marijuana
patients, allows Health Canada - a government agency openly hostile
to people using marijuana as medicine - enough bureaucratic leeway
to weasel out of helping critically and chronically ill Canadians
get access to their medicine," says Tim Meehan, Communications
Director of the marijuana reform organization Ontario Consumers
for Safe Access to Recreational Cannabis (OCSARC),
and Acting Leader of the Ontario
Marijuana Party.
"While the decision affirms that some
medical patients benefit from cannabis, the government to date
has been incompetent in providing access to the medicine,"
says Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of the NORML
Foundation. "While the court allowed patients more access,
in a quid pro quo, the court seeks to limit the range of marijuana
laws for non-medical, adult use."
US Drug Czar John Walters
Not only has the Appeals Court ruled against
recreational users, but the so-called
decriminalization bill introduced for consideration by Parliament
in May 2003, C-38,
is looking more like a criminalization bill every day. If
it passes, it will introduce mandatory minimum sentences for growers
in Canada. It will insure jail time for repeat offenders for low-level
possession charges. And now, after
meetings between Canadian and US drug warriors, meetings that
caused no small amount of friction, and comments
from US Drug Czar John Walters about how "Canadians
are ashamed" of their Prime Minister and his government's
attitude towards marijuana, the bill's proposal to allow possession
of 15
grams or less to result in a fine instead of a criminal charge
has been lowered to 10 grams or less.
Walters was offended that Canadian Prime
Minister Jean Chrétien jokingly told reporters from the
Winnipeg Free Press on October 3 that although
he hasn't ever tried marijuana, he might "try it when it
will no longer be criminal. I will have my money for my fine and
a joint in the other hand."
Prime
Minister Jean Chretien
According to Rolling
Stone magazine, Walters recently threatened in an interview
with the Boston Globe that if Canada moves towards more liberalized
marijuana policies, the repercussions will be felt in tightened,
possibly even a "semi-militarized" border, in similar
fashion to the current border control with Mexico, and Asa Hutchinson,
former head of DEA and now senior official with the Office of
Homeland Security, said that Canada would have to "face consequences"
were they to continue towards marijuana reform. ONDCP official
David Murray also told Vancouver reporters recently that the US
would "have to respond" if Canada ok's decriminalization.
"John Walters' comments about Canada
being 'ashamed' of Jean Chrétien are seen in Canada, like
most foreign policy opinions coming from the Bush Administration
lately, as a product of arrogant self-delusion rather than fact,"
Meehan says. "Apparently Walters suffers from a condition
psychiatrists term 'projection'- where a person projects what
they want others to think and feel," quipped St. Pierre.
"Walters is so deep into this condition that he actually
projects on to an entire nation of people."
Keith Stroup, Executive Director of NORML,
does point out that while the proposed amount of marijuana personally
allowed in C-38 was originally 15 grams or less, and now reduced
to only 10 gram or less resulting in only a fine and no criminal
record, even while proposing mandatory minimum sentences for growers
and other increased penalties for repeated personal possession
offenders, this is still a step in the right direction, albeit
small steps, even if it's not as far as reformers would like things
to go.
