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Canada: Suit Asks Government To Provide Marijuana
Halifax Daily News
Friday 06 Feb 1998 purposes but actually supply the drug to patients, a Toronto AIDS sufferer argues in a constitutional challenge launched yesterday. The suit filed by Jim Wakeford aims to push the legal fight in favor of therapeutic cannabis use a step forward while putting more pressure on the federal government to voluntarily change criminal law. Outlawing the use of pot to fight nausea caused by AIDS drugs violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms' guarantee of life, liberty and security of the person, his lawsuit alleges. Wakeford, 53, said he needs to smoke as many as two joints a day to help alleviate the intense nausea caused by a cocktail of medication he uses to keep the terminal disease at bay. But he said he shouldn't have to break the law to get such relief. "I hate feeling like a criminal," Wakeford told a news conference. "So I've decided to do something about it ... to make it safe, to make it legal, to make it available." But the federal Health Department's top drug regulator said yesterday that it's already possible to use marijuana for such purposes without breaking the law. Although no one has done it yet, doctors can seek permission from Ottawa to provide such controlled substances to patients, said Dan Michols of the therapeutic products directorate. They have to show the marijuana has a legitimate medical use, he said. And the supplier must be licensed by Ottawa to ensure it provides consistently good-quality product and can prevent the pot being diverted into illegal sales. "It already is decriminalized," said Michols. "It depends on the desire of medical practitioners or manufacturers or patients to access marijuana as a drug." Even so, other cases before the courts have already argued a constitutional exemption from the marijuana possession law for certain types of disease. Terry Parker, a Toronto epileptic who smokes pot to prevent seizures, won a landmark ruling in December that said parts of the anti-marijuana law are unconstitutional. But Wakeford's case moves the legal yardstick ahead, arguing that the charter also obliges the federal government to supply the drug so sick people don't have to look for it on the streets. That's not such an unusual demand, said York University law professor Alan Young, who's representing Wakeford. The federal government has in the past actually grown marijuana at its experimental farm in Ottawa, and so did the U.S. government before its program was stopped by former president George Bush, he said. But Michols said there's no precedent for the federal government supplying any drug to patients. Wakeford's physician, Dr. John Goodhew, said drugs have managed to strengthen his immune system and decrease the virus levels in his body. But before Wakeford started smoking marijuana, he looked gaunt, lost weight and was depressed because of the nausea, Goodhew said. None of the legal anti-nausea drugs did much good, he said.
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