Health Canada Exploiting Medical Marijuana Patients!

Last Monday newspapers across Canada broke a startling and dismaying analysis of how Health Canada is severely exploiting almost 2000 citizens who are legally permitted to possess and use medical marijuana.

Records obtained under the Access to Information Act reveal that the federal government charges patients 15 times more for certified medical marijuana than it pays to buy the cannabis in bulk from its official supplier, Prairie Plant Systems.

Leading advocates and organizations who represent both the current and future communities of patients are enlisting the support of all Canadians to seek redress for this gross abuse of those who rely on the help of the government to supply their needed medicine.

In equal order of importance, patients are calling for:

1) The federal government to end the harmful monopoly that's allowing for the economic exploitation of both the critically and chronically ill.

2) Immediate debt forgiveness of the $143,000 purportedly owed to Health Canada by authorized users.

3) Begin immediate negotiations with the provinces on adding medical cannabis to provincial formularies so that the provinces pay for cannabis as they currently do with most other necessary medicines.

4) Initiate and carry out an immediate federal audit of the entire program, as demanded by the Canadian AIDS Society, MP Libby Davies, and Senator Pierre-Claude Nolin. 

Please consider sending a Letter to the Editor to Canadian newspapers.  If you are a Canadian citizen, please give special attention to the newspapers closest to your hometown.

Letters of 200 words or less have the best chance of print.  Personal testimonials from qualified patients, friends and family members also will likely receive greater attention from most newspaper editors. Please consider using at least one of the points above, but, perhaps, not all of them.

Thanks for your effort and support.

It's not what others do it's what YOU do

Some articles and editorials may be found at http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm.
Contact MAP Media Activism Facilitator Steve Heath for tips on how to write LTEs that get printed.  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team   www.mapinc.org/resource