Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007
Subject: #346 Health Canada Exploiting Medical Marijuana Patients!
HEALTH CANADA EXPLOITING MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENTS!
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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #346 – Friday, 20 April 2007
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
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Newspaper Contacts for Your Letters to the Editor
The majority of the newspaper clippings about this exploitation of
patients may be found at
http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Prairie+Plant+Systems
Some articles and editorials may be found at
http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm
To find the letter to the editor contacts by province please go to
http://www.mapinc.org/media.htm – using the ‘List by Area’ dropdown,
select a province and then click the ‘List by Area’ button. Click
‘Contact’ for the contact information of a selected newspaper.
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Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:
http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides
Or contact MAP Media Activism Facilitator Steve Heath for tips on how
to write LTEs that get printed.
heath@mapinc.org
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PLEASE SEND US COPIES OF YOUR LETTERS
Please post copies of your letter writing efforts – or report your
other actions – to the sent letter list ( sentlte@mapinc.org ) if you
are signed up for that list, or by emailing copies directly to
heath@mapinc.org if you are not. Your letter will then be forwarded to
the list so others can learn from your efforts.
Joining the Sent LTE list ( sentlte@mapinc.org ) will help you to
review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing
efforts.
To join the Sent LTE email list see
http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form
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Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource
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