September 2000 Fraser Forum: A Victory for Sensible Drug Policy
Despite Canadians exhibiting a collective clear-mindedness on one of contemporary society’s most emotive issues, drug policy reform has been overlooked by policymakers. No longer.
On July 31, 2000, the argument that doctors may prescribe marijuana as a medical treatment for seriously or terminally ill patients (so-called "medical marijuana") received support in a seminal judicial decision. The Ontario Court of Appeal, the province’s highest court, upheld a 1997 Ontario Superior Court ruling that the prohibition against medical marijuana infringed the rights of Mr. Terry Parker, an epileptic, under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The court declared the marijuana possession section of this country’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to be unconstitutional, as it fails to recognize that marijuana can be used for medicinal purposes. The court has told the federal government that it has 12 months to rewrite the law to allow for medical marijuana, or marijuana possession will be effectively decriminalized.
The court’s judgement reflected what’s been conclusively and repeatedly demonstrated: marijuana serves as a tremendously helpful appetite stimulant or pain reliever to patients afflicted with epilepsy, AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, or multiple sclerosis. Prior to yesterday’s ruling, only 50 Canadians were legally entitled to ingest marijuana. Now, an estimated 150,000 people in Ontario alone could benefit from the medical use of marijuana.
Opposition stems from a combination of ignorance and well-intentioned, if misplaced moralism which argues that medical marijuana promotes drug experimentation and abuse. Suffice it to say, both the historical and scientific evidence demonstrate otherwise.
The standard government line remains that there’s no official evidence marijuana helps ease patients’ symptoms. After all, as US deputy drug czar Dr. Don Vereen noted, "Smoked marijuana has not been tested (by the government)." Fortunately, judicial wisdom and medical expertise is overcoming such political intransigence north and south of the border.
As Dr. Jerome Kassirer, editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, has written, "Thousands of patients with cancer, AIDS, and other diseases report they have obtained striking relief from these devastating symptoms by smoking marijuana." He suggested that "The argument that it would be a signal to the young that "marijuana is OK" is specious."
This view reflects a medical history dating to 2727 BC—the first recorded listing, in Chinese pharmacopoeia, of cannabis as medicine. Revealingly, North America’s prohibition against marijuana occurred against the advice of the medical community. More recently, in 1988, Judge Francis Young, the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s own administrative-law judge, determined that marijuana had a clearly established medical use and, therefore, should be reclassified as a prescriptive drug. Taking a page out of the Canadian playbook, the US government took no action.
The therapeutic benefits of smoking marijuana are numerous, hence a 1991 Harvard University survey’s finding that 44 percent of oncologists recommended marijuana to patients suffering from chemotherapy-induced nausea. A 1997 National Institutes of Health panel concluded that smoking marijuana may help treat a number of conditions, including nausea and pain. The so-called "wasting syndrome" that afflicts those in the latter stages of AIDS may be arrested through marijuana’s ability to stimulate the appetite. There’s also considerable anecdotal evidence that marijuana relieves some of the painful symptoms of multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries.
Yes, there’s the potential for harm from smoking marijuana, especially respiratory damage. These long-term effects are irrelevant, however, to a person who is suffering a slow and terribly painful death.
What’s missing here isn’t public opinion. Most people agree that marijuana-smoking sick people should be treated as patients, rather than as criminals. According to a recent COMPAS poll, 92 percent of Canadians believe medical marijuana use should not be a criminal offense.
Despite popular approval and judicial progress, our legislation remains both anachronistic and cruel. To continue to process, charge, and convict people for medicinal use of marijuana is a blatant waste of limited resources. The law must be changed.
Patrick Basham (patrickb@fraserinstitute.ca) is The Fraser Institute’s Director of the Social Affairs Centre. He is completing his Ph.D. in Political Science from Cambridge University.
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