Are medical pot prescriptions passé now?
With Cannabis Act in effect, advocates question need for an MD’s script
With the legal doors now open on cannabis, some advocates are asking if there’s still a place for medical marijuana in the equation — or is the federal government just burning the joint from both ends.
That’s what 64-year-old cannabis activist Linda Northcott is wondering. “Whether you produce for yourself, for your family, is there now a real need for medical?” she said.
In 2011, Northcott turned her Eastwood home, next to Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton, into what she calls the Cannabis Cottage — a community resource where medical users go to use their prescriptions or work them into other consumable products, like honey, spice, butters, creams, extracts, and more.
She doesn’t charge for her services, considering herself a volunteer attending to society’s sick.
“Thousands of people are dealing with health disorders that need immediate attention,” Northcott said. “Through the cannabis world, this is where these people want to try and get relief.”
As of legalization day, she estimates about 30 users, between the ages of18 and 92, visit her on a regular basis, just to drop by and smoke a joint or learn how to cook their cannabis into something they’re comfortable with.
But now that recreational weed can be purchased legallyin Alberta, whether online through the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission website, or at one of the six stores currently operating in Edmonton, she’s opened the cottage to anyone with legal product, and expects to have more knocking on her door in the coming months.
In January, the Canadian Medical Association submitted a proposal to Health Canada arguing that there is no need for both recreational and medicinal systems to give Canadians access to cannabis.
With retail outlets, the association suggested that doctors no longer need to authorize cannabis use once it is legalized because the substance will be available to those who wish to use it — without a prescription.
But for the time being, Health Canada says it intends to keep the medical route open. Even with the Cannabis Act in effect, patients authorized by healthcare providers can still access medical marijuana by buying from federally licensed sellers, and register with the federal agency to produce cannabis for themselves or designate someone else to produce it for them.
“The Government of Canada has committed to keeping a distinct system for patients and ensuring that individuals who require cannabis for medical purposes have reasonable access to legal and quality-controlled product,” a spokesperson from Health Canada said.
In 2001, the agency created regulations allowing doctors to prescribe cannabis for medical purposes. From April 2017 to June 2018, the total number of medical marijuana clients across the country climbed from 174,503 to 330,758.
Joi Dunn, 47, who first met Northcott about five years ago, has become a familiar face at the cottage. A cannabis user of 15 years, she uses it medicinally to manage her glaucoma, and for meditative purposes, to help her relax and cope with stress.
Like many who visited Northcott on Wednesday to celebrate legalization, she considers herself a private smoker, and sees the cottage as a haven, where like-minded people can smoke and consume without scrutiny. But it’s also more than that. “It’s not just a safe place,” said Dunn, 47.
“It’s like an educational institute.”
With the new laws governing cannabis in the country, she’s thrilled that there’s greater access to the drug, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to change how she gets her own, seeing herself as a medical user first and foremost.
“People use marijuana for different reasons, different purposes,” Dunn said. “I’m an open person and I like to be adventurous, so of course I’m going to pop in a store and see what’s up, (but) I’m still going to have my prescription and I’m gonna do what I’m doing.”
And there are benefits to taking the medical access route. Sun Life Financial, for example, offers extended health-care coverage for medical marijuana users, but only for a handful of conditions and symptoms, such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, and patients needing palliative care.
Benefits aside, for Dunn, opening the gate to recreational cannabis isn’t a redundancy so much as an enhancement to a substance that improves her quality of life.
“I’m glad that I’m alive to see this happen, because it’s all about freedom.” Dunn said.
“I was free a long time ago. Now, I’m extra free.”
“I was free a long time ago. Now, I’m extra free.” JOI DUNN REGULAR CANNABIS USER