Photo by The Canadian Press Images/Lars Hagberg

After decades of court battles that won chronically ill patients the right to use cannabis as medicine, many wonder whether the impending legalization of recreational pot will trample over the progress they’ve made. A government group tasked with creating a framework for legalizing and regulating cannabis published its report in November 2016. Among the suggestions is that medical marijuana be taxed equally with recreational use, and the medical cannabis system be revisited with an eye to phase it out in five years.

But most patient advocates believe this is short-sighted.

“People who are quite sick, who have not found relief elsewhere, to force them to pay potentially premium taxation on these products—for doctor-prescribed medicine—doesn’t make any sense,” says Ronan Levy, lawyer and director of Canadian Cannabis Clinics.

Jonathan Zaid agrees. Director of Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana, he says it’s unfair medical cannabis be subject to taxes, despite tax code exemptions for prescription drugs. “Patients need measures to help with affordability,” he adds, pointing out that even now many struggle to afford it.

Though it’s uncertain where the new recommendations will lead, medical cannabis users aren’t just worried about affordability. Some fear full legalization could steer research away from the unique strains medical users need, or that a disappearing medical cannabis system could leave patients stuck purchasing at high cost from dispensaries not designed for them.

Trina Fraser, an Ottawa-based lawyer who is counsel for the Canadian National Medical Marijuana Association, puts it simply: If cannabis is being used for medical purposes, it should be done under the care of a physician.

Many doctors are hesitant to prescribe, being in the uncomfortable position of gatekeepers for a substance they don’t understand.

One solution many patients are advocating for is giving cannabis extracts a DIN (a Health Canada drug identification number) so they can be dispensed by pharmacies. This would gain many patients coverage under their drug plans, and allow doctors more comfort prescribing a substance that would be better researched and understood.

“To me it is incredibly dangerous to put people in a position where they are mixing and combining drugs without medical supervision or advice,” Fraser says, adding that tax breaks and drug plan coverage are needed. “Is a ‘budtender’ going to be qualified to tell you whether it’s okay to use cannabis in conjunction with your antidepressant?”

While the recommendations suggest keeping medical users’ needs in mind as legalization proceeds, it will be up to patients, advocates, and the public to make sure it happens.

In Canada, there are nearly 40,000 medical marijuana patients; when the program was initiated in 2001, there were 100. Many patients grow their own marijuana, depending on their needs and ailment, such as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, or chemo therapy. Most say they need the drug to function, and some require 40 grams or more a day to manage their condition. In such cases, patients would have to pay $200/day for the drug—a prohibitive cost, and one that is much higher than what it takes to grown the plant themselves.

The government contends the new change will help regulate medicinal marijuana, and protect patients from hazards such as fire, mould, and potential break-ins and burglary. It also claims the new law will also stop abuse of licences and black market trade.

Opponents to the law, however, say it really just makes it harder to get medicine patients desperately need.  John Conroy, a lawyer from Burnaby, B.C., has launched a constitutional challenge against the law. Conroy argues that the law would deny his clients’ reasonable access to medicine they desperately need. Not only will patients be unable to afford buying from state approved growers, he argues, certain strains of the plant that have been found effective for some conditions would no longer be available.

Conroy has asked for a temporary injunction to the law until the court makes a decision on his constitutional challenge. In the meantime, one couple is also suing the government for  $6.5 million, the amount they say they will be forced to pay for the medicine they could happily grow for a fraction of the price: $500. Many medicinal marijuana users are simply vowing to ignore the new law, and continue growing their own pot.

Let’s hope it is all one big, elaborate April Fool’s prank.

Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Neeta Lind.

“This is about the complete failure of democracy,” Alan Young says, munching on his strawberry-jam toast at Sunnybrook Restaurant in Toronto. Young, a criminal lawyer, has been Canada’s forerunning pot reformist since he got a judge to declare that “marijuana is relatively harmless compared to the so-called hard drugs, and including tobacco and alcohol” during his landmark 1997 case, R. v. Clay. He’s behind many of the movement’s other big achievements too: convincing the courts prohibiting pot was unconstitutional for patients under medical supervision (R. v. Parker, 2000) and winning significant, progressive changes to Canada’s Marijuana Medical Access Regulations (Hitzig v. Canada, 2003). Now, at 53, he’s preparing for the next fight: taking on Health Canada and potentially criminal law, which could effectively nullify the Conservatives’ Bill C-15.

If passed into law—it died in the senate when Parliament recessed in December 2009 but is likely to be reintroduced—Bill C-15 would send Canadians caught with more than five marijuana plants to cells for a minimum of six months. Young believes this will effectively flood the judicial system with non-violent offenders, increase an already soaring deficit, and threaten authorized, medicinal grows—especially if they’re caught growing over their limit. “The Conservatives’ legacy will be disastrous,” he says of the bill. “They’re trying to use criminal law to solve every social problem.”

So Young will wage his battle on three fronts. First, he plans to strike down MMAR seed policies preventing patients from purchasing anything other than a single, domestic strain. Then, he’ll fight to increase the grower-patient ratio (it’s currently one-to-two). Lastly, and for Young most importantly, he plans to create an impediment for raids of authorized grows by requiring an initial Health Canada inspection. Young has no illusions that the bill will be stopped—“It’ll be upheld,” he says, resignedly—but hopes these counterweights will at least make it more difficult and expensive to get into people’s homes.

Young also hopes he can press the government to reconsider the path of least resistance: legalization. “Maybe they’ll say, ‘we can’t do this, so let’s just change our criminalization policies,’” he says. It’s not such wishful thinking. Young says Health Canada has already extended an olive branch by asking for a meeting, though he’s not entirely optimistic. “It’s probably just an attempt to neutralize me,” he quips.

But he’s not entirely pessimistic, either. That’s because his fighting principle is ultimately simple: people shouldn’t be sanctioned for their consumption patterns unless there is evidence they are harmful to society. “Right now,” he says, “chances of progressing the position on prohibition could actually be better than they have been.”