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Application rules for marijuana 'frustrating' for MS patient

By: Amy Pugsley - Halifax Herald - 01/27/03

Application rules for marijuana 'frustrating' for MS patient

A chronically ill woman who smokes marijuana to cope with her crippling pain questions why she has to reapply for her license every 12 months.

"I have a disease that's never going to go away . . . so why do I have to go back and renew it every year?" Jane Parker said in a recent interview from her home in South Mountain, Lunenburg County.

The 41-year-old mother of seven suffers from multiple sclerosis.

"I am dealing with a chronic and progressive disease," she says.

Wheelchair bound in 1998, she found her "prescription drug cocktail" did little more than make her feel incredibly sleepy and viciously sick.

"I didn't do much," she says.

She's in pain "pretty much 24-7".

"I get cramps in my insteps that curl my toes down to my heels."

Now, her five joints a day, which cost her $200.00 a week, mask the disease's symptoms. "Inhaling the marijuana can stop muscle spasms within two tokes for me," she says.

"Everything starts to relax. And it's like, 'Oh, thank you God. I feel much better now than I did then.'

" However the red tape she's experiencing with Health Canada is putting her back on edge. "It's extremely stressful....I think they should go back to the drawing board. Health Canada has got to get it together."

Her first one-year exemption expired in November and a subsequent one-month exemption extension did little more than get her through the Christmas holidays. "So now, I'm illegal again and I'm walking around with pot on me," she says with exasperation.

She's applying for another five-month extension so she can adhere to new federal guidelines which says a certified pain specialist must "sign off" on her application. "I'm just waiting for them to mail me that piece of paper.

"It's a very frustrating place to be." She can't understand why the government can't make special licenses for people with chronic conditions. "The thing is, nobody is going to come up with a magic mystery cure, so why do I have to go back and do it every year? Every five years, I'd be okay with."

A spokesperson at Health Canada says normal medical practice dictates that all therapies be regulated and evaluated on a regular basis.

"There have to be limits on the quantity (of controlled substances) that can be possessed and produced and for the length of time for which any authorization can be issued," Jirina Vlk said from Ottawa.

Those regulations apply to all controlled substances, she says. "Even those that are approved and prescribed like morphine."

Evaluations are important because sometimes therapies need to be changes to reflect any improvements or deteriorations in a condition, says Ms. Vlk. "They have to be in line with the medical needs of the individual patient," she says.

Even though someone can suffer from a chronic condition, medical practice requires that a treatment be evaluated.

"There are may be possible interactions with other medical treatments...or there might be newly-developed drugs available that could be more effective than using a controlled substance."