UPDATED: I'm Outraged Over Her Outrage

Playing to her party's base, Health Minister Rona Ambrose yesterday expressed "outrage" over the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to make it legal for medical marijuana users to ingest their pot in any manner they see fit, be it oils, tinctures, cookies, or brownies. Given her well-demonstrated ineptitude in ensuring that Health Canada protect the health of Canadians, (apparently preferring to protect the health of pharmaceuticals' profits), something about which I have written at length on this blog, the integrity of yesterday's partisan denunciation of the court's decision must surely be called into question:



In the interests, as they say, of full disclosure, I do have a personal interest in this subject. My wife, for the past few years, suffered intractable and debilitating pain, pain that was relieved neither by over-the-counter medications nor narcotic painkillers. Happily, after recent surgery, most of that pain should be a thing of the past. Her suffering, however, was a disillusioning revelation to both of us; we had always assumed that most pain could be managed as long as doctors were willing to prescribe the necessary amounts of medication. This is not the case.

While I cannot say for certain that medical pot would have provided the sought-after relief, (and truth be told, my wife did not ask her doctor if he would prescribe it), I became resentful over two things: the fact that her access to it would have depended upon her doctor's beliefs and values, and the fact that Health Canada forbade the ingestion of medical pot in all forms except its dried form, which must be smoked or vaporized. Owing to a lung condition that she has, my wife would thus have been unable to use it in that form. Until yesterday's ruling, she would have been deemed a criminal.

Rona Ambrose asserts that research needs to be done to back up anecdotal claims of pot's medicinal benefits. She is surely being disingenuous here, given that big pharma will not undertake costly research into a substance that they cannot patent, and U.S,. medical research is severely circumscribed due to cannabis being listing as a Schedule 1 drug, reserved for the most dangerous of substances, right up there with heroin. Legal access is therefore difficult to obtain. Fortunately, in some parts of the world, enlighted attitudes coupled with compassion mean research is ramping up.

Beyond its benefits for pain relief, there are many claims to its benefits in treating intractable epilepsy:



And some in the medical community are quite receptive to the possibilities. Click here to play the clip.


If you want to read more about the above program and one mother's tireless battle to legally bring in a tincture from Colorado to her home state of Virginia to treat her saughter, click here. or watch the full program upon which the above is excerpted here. I watched the program when it aired, a good piece of journalism that one would have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be moved by.

Rona Ambose's obduracy of spirit, evidenced in her denunciation of the Supreme Court decision, is unacceptable and a gross insult to all who seek wider access to a medicine that may help them. The Harper regime's shameful trumping of ideology over compassion has no place in the Canada I know and live.

UPDATE: Even if you lack the time or the inclination to watch the Dateline program I described above, go to the 28 minute mark where you will see a vet suffering from PTSD who moved to Coloradeo to have access to marijuana. He displays all of the medications he was prescribed, which he says made him feel like a zombie, that he was able to dispose of once he started using cannabis to treat his condition. It is a powerful visual of what is at stake for the pharmaceuticals and suggests why they are likely a powerful force against widening marijuana's use.