Joanne Crowther uses 15 grams a day to treat her cancer (Photo: CBC)
A new system of commercial production will make medical marijuana too expensive for many of the Canadians who are allowed to use it.
By April, commercial producers will be the only legal source of medical marijuana in Canada. These large-scale operations are expected to churn out marijuana at an average price of $7.50 per gram.
But for the majority of patients authorized to use medical marijuana, paying that amount is out of the question.
Joanne Crowther is one of over 20,000 Canadians who have a license to grow marijuana at home.
She currently uses 15 grams a day to make a concentrated oil that she takes for her lymphoma. But come April 1, Crowther’s personal production license will expire and she will be expected to pay over $3,000 a month to get her medicine by mail.
“I’m fighting for my life. I want to live and the government wants to kill me,” she tells CBC News.
Many are in a similar situation, according to John Conroy, a B.C. lawyer who is helping patients take Health Canada to court over the changes.
Conroy says 60-70% of patients are on fixed disability pensions, which makes growing at home the only affordable option. But the new rules would turn them into criminals, he says, and thus violate their constitutional right to liberty and security of health.
The case will begin this summer. But Conroy is seeking an injunction before the new rules come into effect, which will hopefully grant current license holders an extension on their right to grow.
A hearing is set for March 18, and a decision is expected before April. If an injunction isn’t granted, patients will be left with little choice but to break the law.
No Cost Coverage
Some commercial producers say they will give price reductions to low-income patients, but none have offered to cover the cost completely.
And because marijuana is not an officially authorized drug, most private and public insurers are unwilling to reimburse for it.
A spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Health says PharmaCare, the province’s drug subsidy program, is not considering coverage at this time.
“PharmaCare restricts its drug coverage to medications which Health Canada have assigned Drug Identification Numbers (DINs) and are available by prescription only. Medicinal marijuana does not have a DIN,” she wrote in an email.
The dilemma seems to stem from Health Canada, she later explained over the phone.
DINs are assigned by the federal government, which still maintains that marijuana lacks the proof of safety and efficacy required to be authorized as a drug.
So like many others, Crowther, whose cancer went into remission after switching from chemotherapy to marijuana, says she will continue to grow her own medicine past April 1.
“If they want to charge me,” she says, “they basically are going to write my death sentence, because if they throw me in jail I will not be able to get the oil, my cancer will come back, and I will die.”
Source Leaf Science
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