(A letter from Dr. Meldon Kahan to the National Post on March 2, 2010)...
Re: How To Get Your Medicinal Pot, letter to the editor, Feb. 27.
Dr. David Saul implies that if patients request a Health Canada cannabis authorization form, physicians are obliged by the provincial medical college to sign the form or refer them to a physician who will. This is incorrect and it is reckless to promote cannabis as a harmless medicine. I have seen patients whose lives have been destroyed by cannabis addiction or cannabis-induced psychosis. Smoked cannabis has been shown to cause precancerous changes in various tissues. Also, THC serum levels rise rapidly when smoked, creating a risk for motor vehicle accidents. The oral and inhaled versions of cannabis are far safer.
I would discourage physicians from authorizing smoked cannabis. They should prescribe oral or inhaled cannabis only for patients with a medical condition for which cannabis has been shown to be effective, and who are at low risk for cannabis-related harms.
Dr. Meldon Kahan, medical director,
Addiction Medicine Service, St. Joseph's Health Centre, Toronto
3/25/10
Prolonged Cannabis Use Linked To Psychosis
An Australian study found that prolonged use of cannabis or marijuana by young adults was linked to a higher risk of developing psychosis, with the highest risk affecting those who started using the substance in their teens, and continued using it for 6 years or more into adulthood: the risk of developing psychosis among these users was more than double that of never users.
Criminals exploit Dutch liberal pot laws big time; Government retreats from drug liberalism
Dutch court fines coffee (pot) shop owner 10 mln euros
The government mooted plans last year to transform coffee shops near the Belgian border into private clubs, to address what critics describe as the nuisance created by millions of drug tourists a year.
THE HAGUE, March 25, 2010 (AFP) - A Dutch court fined the owner of the Netherlands' biggest cannabis-vending coffee shop 10 million euros on Thursday after police seized more than 200 kilogrammes of the drug on its premises.
The 13-million-dollar penalty would have been larger, the district court of southwestern Middelburg said in a statement, had it not been for the authorities' apparently contradictory approach to soft drug vending and use.
While finding that coffee shop Checkpoint was a criminal organisation that had transgressed the Opium Act, the court said "the role of the authorities weighed heavily in the determination of the sentence".
This included the "facilitating role of the municipality, of which the prosecution service had been aware, and years of non-enforcement of the law", according to the judgment.
The government mooted plans last year to transform coffee shops near the Belgian border into private clubs, to address what critics describe as the nuisance created by millions of drug tourists a year.
THE HAGUE, March 25, 2010 (AFP) - A Dutch court fined the owner of the Netherlands' biggest cannabis-vending coffee shop 10 million euros on Thursday after police seized more than 200 kilogrammes of the drug on its premises.
The 13-million-dollar penalty would have been larger, the district court of southwestern Middelburg said in a statement, had it not been for the authorities' apparently contradictory approach to soft drug vending and use.
While finding that coffee shop Checkpoint was a criminal organisation that had transgressed the Opium Act, the court said "the role of the authorities weighed heavily in the determination of the sentence".
This included the "facilitating role of the municipality, of which the prosecution service had been aware, and years of non-enforcement of the law", according to the judgment.
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