According to the head of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti, the federal government's new regulations regarding medical marijuana has put a strain on the patient-doctor relationship.
When asked about his view on the prescription medication that has not gone through the proper testing processes, Dr. Francescutti said, " It's just bad medicine to be asked to authorize product that we don't know how it works, we don't know what it works, for whom it works. Where are the studies? We try to base what we do on evidence.
Earlier this year, Canada's Federal Government made some drastic changes to the countries of medical marijuana system by putting new regulations in place requiring patients to ask their doctors for prescription for medical marijuana, which they can then submit directly to A federally licensed marijuana grower. Prior to the changes, patients and needed to receive authorization from Health Canada so that they can obtain the drug, or produce their own.
Dr. Francescutti warns that under the new system, patients who claim to need medical marijuana to manage medical condition will be bouncing from doctor to doctor trying to get a prescription and that, if they cannot obtain the prescription that way, they will find themselves in emergency departments of hospitals as the final option. In this situation, Dr. Francescutti says that a physician will not have sufficient information about the patient to prescribe the drug. "How can I just meet someone and practice good medicine?" He added that many doctors are now facing pressure from patients who demand a prescription based on "outrageous claims," calling on them to blindly prescribe a medication.
Health Minister, Rona Ambrose, has already issued a statement saying that it is not obligatory for doctors to prescribe medical marijuana, "Health Canada does not endorse the use of marijuana, nor is it an approved drug in this country, nor has it gone through any of the clinical trials that other pharmaceutical products that are approved in this country have gone through. The majority of the physician community did not want to prescribe it, they don't want to be put in a situation where there pressured to prescribe it and I encouraged them to not prescribe it if they're not comfortable with it."