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The Run for the Border

© Michelle Struik

On July 30th, 2001 Canada became the second country in the world to legalize the use of medical marijuana. Just for the record Belgium beat Canada out by approximately one week. Now I suspect that many of you are either lamenting the crash of human society as we know it or silently cheering this recent ruling. This of course would depend on your perspective and/or beliefs regarding the medical use of marijuana. Opinions naturally are extremely varied, however while I browsed through many medical message bases since this information hit the news outlets worldwide I’m not surprised to see comments such as: “hmmmm anyone else considering the possibility of immigration to Canada” or “Let’s all do a Taco Bell, it’s a run to the border”. So before all of your flood the Canadian Consulates for immigration rules and regulations let’s first take a look at the ramifications of this new law.

Up until July 30th, many “Compassionate Clubs” supplied medical marijuana to many in need patients who felt their medical conditions improved with the use of medical marijuana. Most police departments in Canada usually left these Compassionate Clubs alone probably because they realized they were serving a valuable service to some people in serious need. I suspect that the police will allow for a conversion period for those patients using the services of Compassionate Clubs to adjust to this new ruling.

So now if you wish to avail yourself of medical marijuana you will have to make application to the federal government. I suspect this will not be a simple process. There are several forms that you as the consumer of the medical marijuana must complete and there are forms for your “designated grower” if you decide to have some other person grow your medical supply for you. Then of course there are the forms your doctor/s will be responsible for. However, at this point there appears to be a bit of a mystery regarding where you can obtain the necessary documents to complete. After searching the Health Canada website, and discussing access to these forms with my doctor just this morning, it would appear that the necessary documentation will be almost as hard to find as it is to fill out.

So, after locating the elusive forms, filling them out, obtaining your doctors documentation, and slipping in some attractive passport photo’s of yourself and your designated grower you are now in shape to ship your paperwork into the government. Sounds like a lot of work doesn’t it?

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