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Should Health Canada centralize medical marijuana production?
Brian Ferry 2012
Health Canada is thinking of taking the growth of medical marijuana out of individual hands. (iStock)
Health Canada is struggling to police its medical marijuana program, which permits over 15,000 people to legally grow their own plants.
CBC News has learned that the department has no record of inspecting any individual growers, who apply in writing and must provide documentation that shows they have a "grave and debilitating" illness.
Those who qualify can grow marijuana for medicinal purposes or have someone grow it for them under a designated-person production licence.
The job of enforcing safety and compliance falls to 15 Health Canada inspectors, who are also responsible for inspecting all legal drugs and pharmaceuticals in Canada.
Some police organizations have raised concerns about the program and the limitations of the background checks required to qualify for it. A 2010 RCMP report contains evidence that 37 convicted traffickers have obtained licenses and that some growers have abused the system or have ties to organized crime.
Officials have admitted that Health Canada has no real enforcement capacity and that they rarely suspend or revoke licenses.
Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq says the program is in need of reform, and that the department is considering a system of mail-order medical pot, to be produced by industrial growers.
"We are moving to eliminate personal grow-ops which will not require inspection," she said. "We are moving forward in looking at medical marijuana in terms of how any other prescription drug is accessed."
Ottawa isn't expected to unveil the new medical marijuana rules until 2014. In the meantime, Health Canada will keep issuing individual growing permits.
One grower told CBC News that those who do not abuse the system should not be penalized because of those who do.
"I liken it to many people who drink and drive and kill people, but just because you have a driver's licence doesn't mean you can't buy alcohol."
Are you concerned about the limited oversight of individual marijuana growers? If so, you think the solution is to set up a mail-order system and stop issuing individual growing permits? Why or why not?.
Health Canada to drop medical marijuana grow-op licenses
Susan Smith March 2012
OTTAWA - After admitting it is ill-equipped to track abuses of the medical marijuana grow-op licenses it issues, Health Canada says it wants to eliminate them altogether and replace them with a mail-order system.
"With over 20,000 Canadians using medical marijuana and each of them theoretically being able to grow it in their own home, this creates a system that would require massive amounts of people to inspect thousands of homes," a spokesman told Sun News.
"The new system will be designed to eliminate as much abuse as possible while making sure patients who have been prescribed medical marijuana are able to access it."
While false reports surfaced Thursday that Health Canada had no record of a single inspection of any grow-op it licensed, Johanne Bealieu, director of the Medical Marijuana Access Program (MMAP), scrambled to tell Sun News it has indeed conducted inspections.
"We do about 160 inspections a year," she said. "We did 75 inspections of license holders under the MMAP in 2010."
Regardless, Health Canada wants to stop issuing the two classes of licenses to grow -- one gives the medical marijuana user permission to grow; the other allows an individual to produce the drug on behalf of the user) -- and replace it with a mail-order system.
The new program would eliminate licenses from getting into the hands of organized crime groups, Beaulieu said.
An RCMP report found roughly one-third of marijuana trafficking and production cases involved licensed individuals growing more than the allowable amount.
Russell Barth, a medical marijuana user and activist, believes the regulation of the drug is a necessarily complex issue and that any proposed solution should reflect that.
Simply eliminating all licenses because a few have been abused by gangs will likely not deter criminal organizations, which produce and distribute drugs regardless of licenses, and will hurt the people the program was intended to help.
CTV: Health Canada debating future of medical marijuana - See video report
Carol Simons March 2012
CTV: Health Canada debating future of medical marijuana - See video report
From CTV News: Health Canada held a hearing in Montreal on Wednesday to hear from groups concerned about the future of medical marijuana in Canada.
Legal use of the drug has been in a grey zone for almost a decade, since the Supreme Court of Canada ruled marijuana use for medical reasons was permissible.
However acquiring marijuana has been a problem for thousands of would-be users.
Many doctors have refused to provide prescriptions for marijuana, so compassion clubs and dispensaries were handing it out to anyone who showed up with what was considered to be a valid medical reason.
Those compassion clubs were recently shut down by Montreal police following complaints that they had essentially turned into centres for drug trafficking.
