Corporate Cannabis

Health Canada’s current attitude toward compassion clubs is that they are “illegal” and “a concern for the police and the justice system,” says a Health Canada spokesperson. Ottawa is obligated by international treaties to “prevent diversion,” meaning they worry compassion clubs could too easily become a front for illegal pot sales.

The problem with Health Canada, says Lynne Belle-Isle of the Canadian aids Society, who also sits on Health Canada’s Stakeholders’ Advisory Committee on Medical Marihuana, “is that they don’t seem to know a lot about cannabis, and they’re not in touch with the community of patients. We want the compassion clubs to be at the table, and there’s a huge resistance on the part of Health Canada to that. Personally, I would prefer a person walking into a compassion club and getting their cannabis than getting it from Joe with a pager on the corner of the street.”

Compassion clubs are the only organizations in Canada that have a ready-made client base for research purposes. Ottawa set aside $7.5 million for research in 1999, but only two studies were ever commissioned, although a third may be announced soon. One has been cancelled; the other, at McGill University’s Pain Centre, is ongoing, and somehow Health Canada has spent $2 million of that original $7.5 million. Cannasat’s Hilary Black believes Ottawa is delaying research in the face of US pressure and potential pharmaceutical options on the horizon. “Health Canada has been dragging their heels just long enough for GW to hit the market,” she says. “And after that point they could close down the Flin Flon operation.”

When large foreign companies such as the drug manufacturer GW and its distributor Bayer arrive on the local medical marijuana scene, it’s easy to see the conflict of interests as a case of hippies vs. suits, of the hippies being in the right, but inevitably losing to Big Bad Pharma. But this exasperates Guy. “Those people who you would have thought would be our biggest supporters are our most vociferous critics,” he says. “We are offering virtually bottled cannabis, cannabis extract for patients who can get it from their doctor, reimbursed by the National Health Service or its equivalent, but here we are, the unacceptable face of pharmaceuticalization and profiteering.”

In Victoria, Philippe Lucas concedes that the big drug companies will probably succeed. Ultimately, he says, the drug does deserve to be approved for ethical reasons: many of the MS sufferers in Canada are too timid or too ill to face the currently too-daunting task of arranging cannabis medicines for themselves. The arrival of Sativex will also help meet the needs of rural and small-town patients who live outside the reach of compassion clubs.

As for GW, let’s leave the last word to Barb St. Jean of Cannabis Health. “They have dedicated experts, and hats off to them—they’ve done a great job,” she says. “But I am perplexed at our own government’s refusal to allow its own citizens to get in the game with alternatives.”