Patients who have prescriptions will be allowed to grow medical marijuana at the safety of their homes, as the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations goes into effect on August 24.
The revised rules will no longer require patients to fulfill their prescriptions at any of the 34 authorized producers, although these facilities will still be considered legal providers of medical marijuana,
CTV Montreal News reported.
“The more choices, the better for patients,” Santé Cannabis executive director Adam Greenblatt said, adding that this would represent significant savings for those who are medicating using marijuana (who usually spend up to $400 a month in their prescriptions).
“You know insurance companies do not pay for the stuff yet. Affordability is the biggest barrier to access in the medical marijuana space,” he explained.
Greenblatt noted that the potential for abuse would be minimal.
“For each gram per day that a patient consumes they're allowed to grow five plants indoors or two plants outdoors,” he stated.
Patients who for some reason are not able to tend to the plants themselves can also assign someone else to grow these for them, a provision that had some authorities worried.
“It creates a very grey area in the law especially when a caregiver can grow on behalf of someone else,” according to Ian Culbert of the Canadian Public Health Association.
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