Canada: Court Ends Government Monopoly on Legal Medical Marijuana

A Canadian Federal Court ruling has struck down a provision of that country's medical marijuana law which required approved users to get their medicine from a government supplier.

According to a Canadian Press report published Jan. 11, 2008 ("Decision Opens Field for Medical Marijuana Growers"), "The decision by Judge Barry Strayer, released late Thursday, essentially grants medical marijuana users more freedom in picking their own grower and allows growers to supply the drug to more than one patient. It's also another blow to the federal government, whose attempts to tightly control access to medical marijuana have prompted numerous court challenges. Currently, medical users can grow their own pot but growers can't supply the drug to more than one user at a time."

The Canadian Press reported that "In his decision, Strayer called the provision unconstitutional and arbitrary, as it 'caused individuals a major difficulty with access. . .' Ottawa must also reconsider requests made by a group of medical users who brought the matter to court to have a single outside supplier as their designated producer, Strayer said in his 23-page decision. While the government has argued that medical users who can't grow their own marijuana can obtain it from its contract manufacturer, fewer than 20 per cent of patients actually use the government's supply, Strayer wrote. 'In my view it is not tenable for the government, consistently with the right established in other courts for qualified medical users to have reasonable access to marijuana, to force them either to buy from the government contractor, grow their own or be limited to the unnecessarily restrictive system of designated producers,' he wrote. "