Distributed: May 30, 2015

Lost amidst the near universal praise for Ontario’s Making Healthier Choices Act is an important community — medical marijuana patients – that will be adversely effected by this act in ways we are sure the authors never intended.

In the government’s efforts to dissuade children from the lure of electronic cigarettes (“e-cigs”), they are classifying medical marijuana vaporizers under the same definition and therefore forcing medical marijuana users to smoke instead of vaporizing. As previous smoking legislation only regulated tobacco products, medical marijuana can still legally be smoked anywhere in Ontario.

“These regulations will severely limit the fundamental needs and rights of medical marijuana patients to use their vaporizers as a harm reduction tool compared with smoking,” said Jonathan Zaid, the founder of Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana (CFAMM).  Zaid uses a Health Canada approved vaporizer for medical marijuana to alleviate symptoms of a neurological pain condition, New Daily Persistent Headache, for which dozens of pharmaceuticals have failed.  Zaid, who is studying at the University of Waterloo, said he needs ready access to his vaporizer on campus to help him concentrate on his studies.  This act forces medical marijuana patients like Jonathan to either not take their medicine, or be subject to second-hand smoke in designated smoking sections.

“Mobility can be a big issue for medical marijuana patients,” said Sean O’Malley, whose teenage daughter uses a vaporizer to administer CBD-rich medical marijuana. “My daughter uses a vaporizer to help control her epilepsy and when she is having seizures she has no ability to move to a smoking section even if she wanted to.”

The restrictions on the sale of vaporizers also has unintended consequence of limiting fair access to medical marijuana for patients who don’t want to smoke.  It is a sad irony that even a vaporizer officially approved for medical marijuana patient use by Health Canada is included in the ban on sales at hospitals, pharmacies and just about anywhere else where goods and services are sold.

With great intentions, we understand why the Making Healthier Choices Act received such thunderous all-party support with a vote of 99-1. The medical marijuana community was clearly not consulted, and this is the result.  We call on the Ontario government to make a simple fix to the act and make legal medical marijuana users exempt from its provisions.

Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana (CFAMM)

MEDIA INQUIRIES:

To interview Jonathan or Sean, please email: [email protected]