HEALTH CARE
medical marijuana
and how the new legislation affects your practice
By Dallas Carpenter
On April 1, 2014, changes to Health Canada’s Marihuana
Medical Access Program come into effect. The new program, Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations, involves
changes to the authorization, production, and distribution
of marijuana for medical use that will impact health providers and patients.
Under the old rules, the physician’s role was to provide a patient with an assessment form which the patient would pass
on to Health Canada. Health Canada would then decide if
the patient was eligible to receive marijuana. A patient
would be able to receive marijuana from a licenced provider
or grow an approved quantity on their own.
The new rules require a prescription from a physician for the
use of marijuana. Once prescribed, the patient must take
the prescription to an approved grower to dispense the prescribed amount of the substance. Health Canada’s role has
been reduced to licencing growers, while the role of physicians has been increased to the role of “gatekeepers.”
The Saskatchewan Medical Association shares the position
of the Canadian Medical Association that “there is insufficient scientific evidence available to support the use of
marijuana for clinical purposes,” and that “there is insufficient evidence on clinical risks and benefits, including the
proper dosage of marijuana to be used and on the potential
interactions between this drug and other medications.”
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan
(CPSS) has set standards for therapy involving the use of
medical marijuana, although the CPSS has also expressed
concerns about physicians prescribing a substance that has
little clinical information available. As Bryan Salte, Associate Registrar and Legal Counsel for CPSS explained at the
May Representative Assembly, “We think it’s important to
say that this is something that is an unproven therapy, it’s
something that we’re not certain of, but nonetheless, no-
body should feel they are compelled to prescribe marijuana
if they are not comfortable doing it.”
A physician choosing to prescribe marijuana must be the
physician treating the condition the marijuana is prescribed
to treat. The physician must keep extensive records and
conduct a physical examination before authorizing the use
of marijuana, and must obtain statements from the patient
that they will use marijuana only in the dosage prescribed
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