Plants waiting to be sold at Toronto dispensary CALM (Photo: Tyler Anderson/National Post)
Under new rules that take effect in April, medical marijuana dispensaries are being brushed aside in favor of a commercial mail-order system.
Rebecca Penn, a graduate student at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, is one of many who believe the government has overlooked the role of dispensaries.
“When someone goes into a community-based cannabis dispensary,” she explains, “they have the potential of linking up to all kinds of additional resources that will help support their health and wellness.”
“Those things are being lost when you’re turning it into a mail-order, internet-based business. You don’t have that kind of personal connection.”
Dispensaries, also known as compassion clubs, have always operated in a grey area of the law, since Health Canada has never officially approved them. Yet today, they provide medical marijuana for roughly 50,000 patients across the country.
However, it’s not just marijuana that they offer, but access to resources and support networks as well.
“Dispensaries are a safe and empowering environment,” says Amy Brown, who conducts member orientations at Toronto-based dispensary CALM.
“It’s very crucial to the medicine itself.”
While Health Canada seems to have missed these qualities, in a paper published last month in theInternational Journal of Drug Policy, Penn highlights the role that medical marijuana dispensaries have long served in Canada.
Penn’s paper argues that dispensaries help form a community of support around a medicine that many still consider taboo. In fact, she believes this fits what social theorists call an ‘embodied health movement,’ which describes patients empowering one another through a treatment that challenges traditional science.
Indeed, the first dispensaries in Canada came years before medical marijuana was legalized. And over time, they’ve played a major part in shaping both policy and research that surrounds the treatment.
Penn notes that organizations like the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries have also made efforts to integrate with government regulations. Yet for reasons unclear, Health Canada decided to reject the dispensary model in drafting the new MMPR program.
It’s unfortunate, Penn says, since she believes the best form of treatment often involves more than just the medicine itself.
“We know through research done around counselling and therapy that what matters most isn’t necessarily the model of therapy as much as the connection with the provider. That’s so important, and that’s going to be completely lost in the approach they’re taking now.”
Brown, who has spent the last 4 years working at CALM, agrees that dispensaries in Canada now face an uncertain future.
“It’s very up in the air. According to the MMPR, dispensaries or storefronts are not allowed.”
She suspects most dispensaries haven’t made a final decision on what to do come April. However, her experiences lend weight to concerns about the ban – for patients.
“There’s a lot of people who are new to cannabis, who’ve never used it in their life,” says Brown of the patients who visit CALM. “Cannabis has such a stigma attached to it that a lot of people, who are new coming into using it, are a bit scared in the first place.”
“Having a conversation over the phone and placing an order for a medicine that you’ve never tried is a little disheartening. It’s not empowering at all.”
Source Leaf Science
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