Pot users fear postal gaffe will make them targets
Health Canada ‘error’ reveals ID of medical marijuana recipients
Medical marijuana users Russell Barth and his wife Christine Lowe opened their mailbox Thursday morning and pulled out envelopes clearly marked as coming from Health Canada’s Marihuana Medical Access Program — effectively locating a stash of dope for any would-be thief or giving nosy neighbours some private health information to gossip about.
Barth, just one of 40,000 Canadians to get similar letters, was furious that he’d been outed by the government: “It’s deliberate,” he said. “They want to hurt us.”
By late afternoon, Health Canada deputy minister George Da Post had apologized to all 40,000 recipients.
“I have been advised that as the result of an administrative error, the envelopes were labelled to indicate that they were sent by the program,” he said.
“This is not standard Health Canada practice. On behalf of Health Canada, I deeply regret this administrative error. Health Canada is taking steps to ensure this does not happen again.”
The form letter inside the envelope advised Canadians with medical marijuana licences about changes to the program that will hand production over to commercial growers and eliminate individual producers who now supply users like Barth and Lowe.
But social activist Barth, who suffers from fibromyalgia and chronic pain and is full-time caregiver for his wife who is epileptic, doesn’t buy the “gaffe” explanation and claims the outing is an example of the disrespect he says federal Conservative politicians have for the licensed medical marijuana program.
“We’re considered criminals first and patients second,” he said. “Anyone who looks at this envelope can associate my name with marijuana. It shows the whole world that we have medical marijuana licences which means we have pot in our home. This is something people break into houses and rob you for.”
“They (the government) are politically outing people without our consent and they know perfectly well it will be harmful,” he added. “They know it’s a breach of our privacy and a breach of our Charter rights and they know they are going to get an onslaught of complaints.”
Health Canada bureaucrats are only doing what their political masters tell them, claimed Barth, who ran against federal cabinet minister John Baird in the 2004 federal election and got 430 votes.
“The people at Health Canada are just government workers who do what they’re told,” he said. “I don’t blame them. They have all this s--t coming down from the government and sick people screaming obscenities at them. It’s a thankless job.”
Barth said he and his wife consume — mostly by eating — two pounds (907 grams) of marijuana a month and even before Thursday’s Health Canada letter arrived, Lowe said she was often anxious.
“It makes someone more inclined to do a home invasion,” she said.
A public advocate for marijuana for the last decade, Barth admitted that the privacy violation is of less a concern for him than it will be for others.
“How many pot licence people are actually activists in Canada?” he said. “Maybe 60. This is freaking a lot of people out today.”
Medical marijuana user Marcel Gignac from Amherst, N.S., told The Canadian Press that the gaffe has painted a target on the backs of medical marijuana patients across the country.
“Patients are a little upset,” said Gignac. “Health Canada put thousands of the most vulnerable at risk.”
Gignac, spokesman for the Medicinal Cannabis Patients Alliance of Canada Inc., said Health Canada has previously used registered mail and discreet envelopes in communications with users.
As social media sites buzzed with news of Health Canada’s delivery, recipients began complaining to the federal privacy commissioner’s office, who issued a statement late Thursday saying they would be investigating.