ACTIVISTS LINK POT PATIENTS WITH GROWERS
Saskatoon Star Phoenix (Regina Leader Post Article Below)

Members of a Saskatchewan marijuana lobby group have started acting as intermediaries between pot growers and patients who have a medical exemption to smoke the drug, saying they are providing a compassionate service to those in need.
"Somebody's got to help these people. We are prepared to help them fill that prescription," said Timothy Hampton, Saskatchewan president of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
"It's absolutely illegal, but we have volunteers who are willing to go to jail here."
The Saskatchewan branch of NORML has started a program called the Grower-Patient Connection. Patients who have AIDS, cancer, anorexia, or other afflictions may qualify for a medical exemption to smoke pot as therapy.
More than 500 Canadians have received the exemption, including about 10 in Saskatchewan. The problem, said Hampton, is patients have no place to purchase the drug legally.
The federal government operation in Flin Flon will supply marijuana for research, and what is left for patients won't be available until next year.
Patients can designate a grower to supply them legally, but the grower cannot have a pot-related criminal conviction in the past 10 years, according to Health Canada rules. Patients can also get a licence to grow their own pot.
Health Canada spokesperson Andrew Swift notes that no one has yet been granted a licence as a designated grower.
That means people have to buy the drugs from an illegal grower. It becomes legal for patients to possess it, although the producer is committing a crime by growing and supplying it to them.

A Match Made In Smoke
November 20, 2001
By Angela Hall, Regina Leader Post
Regina Leader-Post

Call it an unusual online matchmaking service. A new Regina Web site wants to match people qualified to smoke marijuana for medical reasons with people that can legally grow it for them.
Launched by the Saskatchewan chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the Grower-Patient Connection site wants to guide people through the process of applying to have marijuana legally, said 24- year-old Regina resident Daniel Johnson.
"We're seeing if there's other people who can do this better than we can, but since nobody else is doing it yet we might as well jump in with both feet and at least start something," Johnson said.
Under government regulations, the terminally ill or those with chronic diseases such as MS or AIDS are among those who could qualify for medicinal marijuana. Johnson hopes the drug will eventually be legalized.
But for now, the Grower-Patient Connection could help people legally allowed to have it find safer and easier ways to get it.
"In order for me to find it, I would have to associate with people I honestly feel are scum," Johnson said.
Arranging a good way to legally access drugs is just one part of the challenge, though. First, patients need the proper approval, with a form completed by a physician. One part requires a doctor to agree the benefits outweigh any risks associated with marijuana use.
The Canadian Medical Protective Association, a body representing 95 per cent of physicians in Canada, has advised its members not to fill out the forms if they don't have this detailed knowledge. The Canadian Medical Association has expressed similar feelings.
"I don't think it's fair to put the physician at some medical legal risk of lawsuit or complaint to the college down the road if ... the patient suffers adverse and unanticipated effects," said CMPA secretary-treasurer Dr. John Gray.
Since the regulations on marijuana for medicinal use took effect at the end of July, 38 people across Canada have been authourized to use the drug. Health Canada won't break the numbers down by province, but the Saskatchewan Medical Association reports physicians have begun receiving requests.
The big problem, say some doctors, is that there just isn't enough medical research on marijuana.
"I think family doctors are generally a conservative group, and I think what we would probably like to see, as with any new medication, is make sure it's been out there and we know what it does and doesn't do before we prescribe it," said Dr. Gill White, a family doctor at Regina's General Hospital and head of the University of Saskatchewan's department of family medicine.
A "synthetic cousin" of marijuana is now on the market as a prescribed drug and is sometimes used in the Pasqua Hospital's palliative unit for nausea and vomiting, said White, but that drug has undergone extensive research that naturally grown marijuana hasn't.
"We've kind of done things backwards here," said Dr. Peter Barrett, a Saskatoon doctor and past-president of the Canadian Medical Association.
Barrett said doctors need to be able to give patients information such as what drugs marijuana may have reactions with or what kind of dosages to take.
"One of the problems in Saskatchewan would be even if you wanted to do this, where would you tell them to go and get it?" he said. "Most of us don't move in those circles."
Health Canada spokesperson Andrew Swift said the application process for medicinal use of marijuana is "really a compassionate framework".
He said the department shares the CMA's concerns about the safety of the drug. As for access, people can grow it themselves, designate someone to grow it for them when they apply, or, as of 2002, get it through Praire Plant Systems, a company growing marijuana for Health Canada in an underground mine in Flin Flon, Man.
In the meantime, some Saskatchewan doctors plan to take a wait-and-see approach. Dr. Bev Karras, president of the Saskatchewan Medical Association, said doctors are comfortable dealing with different drugs, and have empathy for their patients. But most doctors don't feel they know enough about marijuana and its effects, she said.