Re: Government as sole seller of medical pot disastrous (SP, April 27). I am amazed that one piece of inaccurate journalism from an Access to Information request, taken out of context, has gained so much notoriety.
The original Canadian Press story of April 15 was based on misleading information and seemed designed to discredit Health Canada's medical marijuana program. Within its first two paragraphs, the lack of logic is exposed.
The two figures quoted are $328.75 per kilogram and a contract with Prairie Plant Systems of $10.3 million. To earn $10.3 million at $328.75 per kilogram would mean the company would have to produce 31,330 kilograms (31.3 million grams) of medical marijuana.
Even at $5 a gram, which is well below the drug's street value, the government hypothetically would have to produce and sell an equivalent of $150 million worth of marijuana. That is one massive grow-op, by any standard.
Let's put the numbers in perspective. A total 31.3 million grams of marijuana is sufficient to supply 17,167 people for a whole year, based on a dose of five grams per day. This is an order of magnitude difference when the CP article reported there were 1,742 approved Health Canada recipients, the majority of whom grow their own.
Had the reporter bothered to look at the contract awarded to Prairie Plant Systems, he would have seen that it calls for upwards of 400 kilograms a year. Since the contract was also released under Access to Information, I can only assume that he disregarded the facts.
It is unfortunate that the Marijuana Party used this misleading information in an attempt to further its political agenda. It's only hurting the people it claims to be protecting.
Brent H. Zettl
President and CEO
Prairie Plant Systems Inc.
If I wasn't so tired I would turn this into a letter to the editor.
Zettl doesn’t exactly deny that the low-grade shwag medical marijuana provided by PPS is being sold at the extremely high price of $328.75. Maybe he is trying to claim that PPS is pocketing the dough rather than letting Health Canada make all the money. There is something terribly wrong with this system when an easily grown weed is worth $328.75 per kilogram. Compare that to a kilogram of potatoes, which are only worth a few dollars. The fact that such a high price is being charged to Canadian tax-payers and medical marijuana patients is ridiculous and unconscionable. If you waste time quibbling over who is robbing the Canadian public, you risk missing the entire point. Medical marijuana patients are being gouged. If marijuana were legal to grow, these patients would not need to be concerned about participating in the black market or running afoul of the legal regulations.
If PPS does succeed in getting monopoly control of the medical marijuana supply, patients will be forced to go broke paying for low-quality, legal medicine. If that happens, patients will probably be better off using the black market. This certainly is not in keeping with the spirit of the Ontario’s Supreme Court ruling back in 1999 that allowed patients to have access to a safe, legal supply of their medicine. I hope that the Victoria-based Vancouver Island Compassion Club is successful in their upcoming constitutional challenge to the federal medical cannabis program. Perhaps then the government will finally take action and ensure that patients have access to their medicine.
Sincerely,
Tanya Derbowka
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