April 14, 2011 – Lawmakers and enforcers are looking for guidance on how to react to an Ontario Superior Court decision quashing Canada’s marijuana laws.

On Monday, a St. Catharines judge ruled the federal medical marijuana program unconstitutional because patients are largely prevented from legally accessing the drugs they need. Justice Donald Taliano also struck down the country’s laws against possessing and producing cannabis, giving Ottawa three months to fix the program before marijuana is effectively legalized.

The government is now awaiting direction from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, said Tim Vail, spokesperson for Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, who is currently running for re-election in Nunavut.

“We are disappointed with this decision,” Vail said in an emailed statement. “The independent Public Prosecution Service has to decide whether to appeal this decision.

“While the courts have said that there must be reasonable access to marijuana for medical purposes, we believe that this must be done in a controlled fashion to ensure public safety.”

Vail added that the government is considering “longer-term measures” to reform the medical marijuana program.

The Public Prosecution Service is studying the judge’s decision and has 30 days to appeal the ruling which it is expected to do.

In the meantime, the Ontario Provincial Police will continue to enforce marijuana laws — even though they may cease to exist in less than 90 days.

“It does create a legal grey zone,” said OPP spokesman Sgt. Pierre Chamberland. “Until that grey zone becomes a black and white, then the legislation remains status quo, and our actions in regards to enforcing the law remain status quo.”

In Toronto, police are waiting to consult with federal officials before deciding what impact the court decision will have on front-line drug policing.

“We need to read the decision, but also we need to speak with some colleagues in the criminal justice system,” said Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash. “We’ll put out guidance to our officers so (they) know where we stand.”

Taliano made his ruling based on findings that Canadian doctors have “massively boycotted” the medical marijuana program.

Patients seeking a licence to obtain or grow marijuana for medicinal purposes must first find a doctor to support their application, a near-impossible task that forces sick people to resort to illegal measures, Taliano said in his ruling.

Toronto family physician Dr. Tsvi Gallant said most doctors are uneducated about the medicinal properties of marijuana and physicians are largely discouraged by their professional associations from participating in the program.

“I know most of my colleagues would refuse to touch it,” Gallant said. “A lot of family physicians will not even want to deal with it in the first place.”

Gallant said patients must also renew their medical marijuana licences every year but processing times are glacially slow.

“It’s much easier to go to the street and buy it illegally,” said Gallant, who encourages most of his patients to buy cannabis from compassion clubs. “Patients start breaking the law. And it happens again and again and again and again.” Source.

April 14, 2011 – It is hard to understand why Canada criminalizes marijuana. Make it illegal, sure – subject to a fine, as is wearing a face veil in France – but where is the high degree of harm, to others or self, that requires criminal sanction, including jail?

The criminal law is not meant to be used where a finger wag might do.

On one level, an Ontario court ruling this week striking down Canada’s marijuana laws was about medicinal users. The law was deemed unconstitutional because it obliges sick people to obtain a doctor’s approval for use, a procedure that doctors have largely boycotted, on the advice of their provincial associations and their insurer. Rather than work with physicians to meet their concerns, Health Canada had absolved itself of responsibility.

But the question that is impossible to avoid in the thorough, well-reasoned ruling by Mr. Justice D.J. Taliano, of the Superior Court, is: Why criminalize?

The Ontario Court of Appeal has previously accepted that marijuana consumption is “relatively harmless,” compared with hard drugs, tobacco or alcohol; that there is no hard evidence of irreversible organic or mental damage; that no evidence shows cannabis induces psychoses; that cannabis is not addictive; that marijuana use doesn’t cause criminality, doesn’t make people more aggressive or violent, and probably doesn’t lead to hard drug use; that there have been no recorded deaths from marijuana consumption; that it does not cause a “motivational syndrome”; and that, where the drug is decriminalized, consumption doesn’t increase wildly.

The constitutional issue is easy to understand. The state’s marijuana ban aims to protect people from harm, yet the ban imposes harm on sick people. Judge Taliano heard from would-be medical users from across Canada that it was nearly impossible to find a doctor who would sign off on marijuana use. These would-be users included people with multiple sclerosis and HIV-AIDS. It is not as if the alternative, prescription opioids, is perfectly wonderful. Those drugs are involved in more overdose deaths in North America than cocaine or heroine.

The federal government has been given three months to fix the marijuana law for medicinal users or that law will fall by the wayside. Separately, the Conservatives want a mandatory minimum of six months in jail for people who grow six marijuana plants. How about a debate on the decriminalization of marijuana? Source.