"[The
VICS] has provided that which the government was unable to provide:
a safe and high quality supply of marijuana to those needing it for
medicinal purposes"
- B.C. Provincial Judge Higinbotham
Canadian Legal Medical marijuana users decry federally
sanctioned product as weak and pricey.
The cannabis menu at the Vancouver Island
Compassion Society changes daily. On this particular day, clients have a
choice of Pochi, Hog, Shishberry, Imposter or Jack Herer. Beneath each
name, a brief description of the effects of the variety is provided:
strong and heady, reads one; mellow and body buzz, reads another.
In addition to supplying medical cannabis
buds to about 600 clients on Vancouver Island, the compassion society
offers an arrange of cannabis by-products and alternatives to smoking,
such as cookies, oral sprays and tinctures, says society director Philippe
Lucas.
It's the society's variety of products
and family atmosphere that brings clients in to his underground operation
- that, and the fact that federally-approved legal marijuana is
substandard, Lucas says.
So it was with great surprise when he
heard the federal government awarded a 15-month contract extension worth
$2.1 million to Canada's only legal grow-op, just two weeks after it
gutted a $4-million fund for research into medical marijuana.
The government announced its decision to
fund Prairie Plant Systems Inc. to grow cannabis inside an abandoned mine
shaft mid-October.
"The frustration there is this is a
company that really has not worked hard to meet the needs of the end users
of this product," Lucas says in a recent interview.
While 1,400 Canadians are registered in
the medical marijuana program, only 300 order marijuana through PPS.
According to Lucas, the government has
spent more than $8 million on the PPS production facility.
"Now if we divide that over 300
people, we can see what we're growing in Flin Flon, Manitoba is the
world's most expensive bud," he says.
But PPS president Brent Zettl says public
outcry from medical marijuana advocates is a thin disguise for ulterior
motives.
"It's a cleverly disguised marketing
campaign aimed to discredit what we do so they can be the only
suppliers."
Zettl stands by the PPS product and says
the number of users is steadily growing and demand for the product has
jumped 80 per cent this year.
"Ninety-nine per cent of our
patients are repeat customers and the only time they stop receiving our
product is, unfortunately, when they've had a medical condition that's
gotten worse."
Jason Wilcox of James Bay is HIV positive
and co-infected with hepatitis C. He recently purchased 300 grams of
cannabis from PPS for $1,500 (plus $90 in PST and GST).
"I'm actually disappointed,"
Wilcox says. "It's quite a large amount of money for stuff that has
stem in it."
He depends on cannabis to help him take
his anti-viral medications.
"When you're sick and have a
long-term illness that's terminal, sometimes you have to take medications
just to take you medications. You have to smoke cannabis in order to take
your medications to keep them down."
Zettl says PPS has worked hard to produce
a safe and consistent product for end users like Wilcox.
But is it strong enough?
Adrian Cameron of Esquimalt recently
finished a one-year study conducted by McGill University Health Centre on
the medical use of marijuana for pain management. To standardize the test,
COMPASS study participants like Cameron were supplied with the PPS
product.
Cameron, who suffers from pancreatitis,
has been self-medicating with cannabis for four years, and has been a
federally approved user for two years. Prior to participating in the study
he used marijuana from a reliable source in Vancouver.
He found he had to smoke more PPS
cannabis than usual to get the same medical benefits.
"I averaged one to two grams in use
of the Vancouver product I was getting," Cameron says. "The PPS
product, in order to keep stability with my condition, I was using the
full 3 grams a day."
And it comes down to cost.
The PPS cannabis costs $150 for 30 grams,
which is comparable to the street value of marijuana and cannabis
available from compassion clubs.
If Cameron is going to shell out $400
from his meagre $650 disability cheque, he wants the biggest bang for his
buck.
"The product from VICS is certainly
stronger and that translates into having to use less of it," Cameron
says.
The PPS product has 12.5 per cent
tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot. That
percentage is level Health Canada has deemed acceptable based on national
averages of THC in marijuana seized by police.
Zettl says that's above the national
average of nine to 10 per cent, and well above what you'll find on B.C.
streets.
"I hate to burst everyone's bubble,
but... the average grade in British Columbia is seven per cent,"
Zettl says.
But Ted Smith, founder of the
Victoria-based Cannabis Buyers' Club of Canada, says it's not an accurate
comparison.
"He's comparing his average to the
average THC content in stuff seized by police, not the average THC content
in compassion clubs," Smith says.
But the problem here is his compassion
club doesn't do its own testing.
"It's debatable right, how much THC
is in the pot we sell because we don't test it, but I think it's probably
16-17 per cent THC. Well, that five per cent difference is quite
substantial to people who are sick."
The big selling point for compassion
clubs like Smith's are the variety of strains of pot and related products
they sell. Currently the Cannabis Buyers' Club of Canada sells 22
different skin and food products and supplies medical marijuana to about
1,900 clients, mostly on Vancouver Island.
While Zettl would like to expand the
number of varieties his Prairie Plant Systems produces, he's only licensed
by the federal government to produce the one strain. Nonetheless, the
company points to a return rate of less than one per cent as proof of
customer satisfaction.
Lucas attributes the dramatically reduced
return rate to Health Canada's change in policy, which makes it impossible
for clients to obtain a refund once the package has been opened.
"Literally it's the equivalent of
sitting down for a meal, taking a bite of something rotten asking for
another meal, and having the waiter say 'sorry I can't take this back
because you've actually tasted it,'" Lucas says.
Health Canada first approved the medical
use of cannabis in 2001 and in that same year the federal Liberal
government under Jean Chretien awarded PPS a $5.7-million contract to grow
marijuana for research purposes.
In 2003, an Ontario judge ruled that
allowing the medicinal use of cannabis without providing access to a legal
supply was a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Soon after, PPS started marketing its products to the public.
The PPS contract extension was
particularly shocking to researchers in light of recent federal spending
cuts to the medical marijuana research program.
According to information on the
Department of Finance Canada website, the government cut research funding
because it doesn't need to "tell profession researchers what to
study" and listed medical marijuana research as a non-core program.
But medical cannabis advocates argue the
research program was developed with advice from an expert advisory
committee on new active substances - an external body of scientific and
medical experts.
"It's a frustrating catch-22 because
over and over we're going to be told by the government, certainly by this
Harper government, that we don't know enough about medical marijuana to
make it widely available or to make it available like any other
medication," Lucas says.
About a million Canadians say they use
marijuana for medicinal purposes.
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