Once upon a time, about 8 or so years ago, I was hospitalized for the first time in my life. While I was recovering, attached to an IV pole that I named "Sancho" a la Don Quixote, I would wander about the building. On a regular basis, a strange and somehow faintly familiar odour would assail my nostrils; bringing back memories of being in someone's basement on hot summer nights listening to Moody Blues records in the dark.
The days of my mispent youth aside, there was a man in the hospital at that time who had fought for and won the right to use medical marijuana. Unfortunately, while he had the right to use it, there was no legal supply available. None the less, it was brought to him on a daily basis from a source that no one asked about and the nursing staff simply closed the door to his room and pretended that nothing was happening.
The Federal Government has gone in the the Medical Marijuana business and pays "Prairie Plant Systems" to grow it in an abandoned mine shaft in Flin Flon Manitoba. According to records obtained under the Access to Information act, the cost to the patients is 15 times more than the government pays for the weed in the first place. In effect, the government has allowed the use of medical marijuana on one hand, and is placing it out of the reach of those who need it with the other. (I know that this sure isn't covered by my medical plan).
Health Canada, in turn, sells the marijuana to a small group of authorized users for $150 - plus GST - for each 30-gram bag of ground-up flowering tops, with a strength of up to 14 per cent THC, the main active ingredient. That works out to $5,000 for each kilogram, or a markup of more than 1,500 per cent.
To add insult to injury, I have been told that the government weed, in the immortal words of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, "couldn't get a fly high".
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