Canada, the worldwide leader in medical marijuana, has so far been a model for other countries to follow. Companies producing cannabis with licensing from Health Canada, the nationwide health ministry, provide marijuana to almost 270,000 patients and export both cannabis flower and oil to other countries.<\/p>\n
Until 2015, a disproportionate amount of the domestic supply was going to a small group of military veterans in New Brunswick, a small province in eastern Canada along the American border.<\/p>\n
There are more than 14,000 military veterans in Canada with PTSD. As a detailed investigation from the Globe and Mail revealed<\/a>, a group of these vets near Base Gagetown, a New Brunswick military base, billed the national veterans\u2019 affairs organization for almost 40 percent of all cannabis paid for by Veterans Affairs Canada.<\/p>\n Government spending on cannabis for military veterans soared from $63,000 in 2010 to $20.5 million in 2015, to $63 million through the end of 2016. The government tired of the arrangement and slapped daily limits on how much cannabis the veterans were allowed to consume on a daily basis \u2014 slashing the daily limit of government-funded weed by 70 percent.<\/p>\n Instead of up to 10 grams a day, vets were limited to 3 \u2014 for reasons that were, according to the paper, mostly financial, rather than medical.<\/p>\n The results? Less taxpayer-funded cannabis is going to the veterans \u2014 and, according to the newspaper, an accompanying uptick in PTSD-related symptoms, including suicide and homelessness as well as other, \u201clesser\u201d conditions like insomnia and paranoia.<\/p>\n The episode also draws a stark distinction between other drugs used to treat PTSD<\/a> \u2014including prescription opiates as well as mood-altering antidepressants \u2014 and cannabis.<\/p>\n While medical research into marijuana\u2019s efficacy to treat disorders like PTSD is still in the beginning stages, anecdotal evidence is nearly universal in its support for cannabis as a less harmful alternative to pharmaceutical drugs for the debilitating condition.<\/p>\n No accompanying limits or outrage appear to extend to the pharmaceutical regimen for PTSD, which Canadian doctors treat with \u201ca cocktail of sleeping pills, antidepressants, anti-anxiety agents, antipsychotics, tranquilizers, benzodiazepines and so-called off-label medications designed to treat other conditions entirely,\u201d as the Globe and Mail reported.<\/p>\n The following anecdote from Cory Pike, a father of four who served one tour of duty with the Canadian military in Afghanistan \u2014 where Canadian troops have been assisting the U.S.-led mission since the war on terror began \u2014 is all too typical.<\/p>\n From the Globe and Mail:<\/p>\n \u201cNone of the pills worked,\u201d said Mr. Pike. \u201cI had two handfuls of things I would take just so I could leave the house.\u201d He began to abuse opiates, crack and cocaine, all to numb himself.<\/em><\/p>\n Then one day he tried smoking a joint. \u201cI was able to function normally,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s how I felt. Normal.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Another military veteran, Fabian Henry, says that after three years of drunk-driving arrests, threats to kill other people, and the implosion of his marriage and the loss of custody of his children \u2014 all a result of the loss of control and outbursts of rage that he says are a result of his PTSD \u2014 he finally bought some marijuana on the street.<\/p>\n Before long, he told the newspaper, he\u2019d spent $37,000 on cannabis because the alternative was the situation described above.<\/p>\n Keep in mind that cannabis patients in Canada aren\u2019t legally allowed to grow their own supply and that legal Canadian medical marijuana isn\u2019t bought in a dispensary \u2014 it\u2019s shipped directly to the patient by one of the Health Canada-licensed suppliers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thus, a veteran who wants cannabis has two choices: Do it the right way, and perhaps not have enough to treat his or her condition, or break the law.<\/p>\n Or, the third choice: go back to suicidal and homicidal tendencies. What would you choose?<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> have you ever used cannabis for medical reasons?<\/p>\n The post Canada Cuts Medical Marijuana Provided to Veterans<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Canada, the worldwide leader in medical marijuana, has so far been a model for other countries to follow. Companies producing cannabis with licensing from Health Canada, the nationwide health ministry, provide marijuana to almost 270,000 patients and export both cannabis flower and oil to other countries. Until 2015, a disproportionateContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,50,53,139,339,210],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26165,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26164\/revisions\/26165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Canada Cuts Medical Marijuana Provided to Veterans<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"