By Murray Opdahl, MD, BSPE, CCFP
As of April 1, 2014, Health Canada stopped authorizing use of marijuana in Canada and placed this responsibility on physicians who were not particularly interested in having this responsibility. Currently, physicians can choose to provide a “medical document” that authorizes the patient to obtain marijuana from a licensed producer.
Under the previous system, physicians completed a document that was provided to Health Canada, which would then decide whether to grant a patient an exemption to allow the patient to possess or grow marijuana themselves. There were listed conditions for which a family physician could support a patient’s use of marijuana, but now the decision to provide a medical document to the patient is placed solely on the physician and there are no longer any categories of medical conditions for which it can be prescribed.
Health Canada’s only role currently is to license producers to grow and sell marijuana for medical purposes. In fact, the Health Canada has suggested it does not “endorse” marijuana, which is not an “approved” drug, but “the courts have required reasonable access to a legal source of marijuana when authorized by a physician.”
As it stands, physicians are the sole gatekeepers in authorizing legal access to cannabis for medical reasons. However, due to lack of robust supporting published evidence, personal reasons, and advice from multiple associations, many physicians continue to be reluctant to authorize this remedy. Clearly, more research in the basic science and clinical use of cannabinoids is required to address the fact that society’s demand for this remedy is way ahead of the evidence that is available for safe and effective use of cannabis as a medical treatment. Continue reading
On March 2, the history community lost a major figure, great scholar, and terrific colleague when John Long passed away in North Bay, Ontario. Born in Brampton on December 18, 1948, Professor Long’s career as an educator and researcher took him across the country, but the Mushkegowuk people and Treaty 9 territory had a special place in his life and work.
In 2010, he published his groundbreaking book Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905. The book shows how the government omitted and misrepresented central elements of the treaty in its conversations with the Mushkegowuk people. In its description of the book McGill-Queen’s Press says that that it “sets the record straight while illuminating the machinations and deceit behind treaty-making.” In a review, historian J.R. Miller writes “Dr. Long has done the First Nations of far northern Ontario an enormous service, and shows scholars of Native-newcomer relations how ethnohistory should be done.” Long’s research inspired award-winning filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin’s latest documentary – Trick or Treaty.
