What if Medical Marijuana Becomes Easier to Get?

On Tuesday night we learned that, because of the extreme difficulty involved in getting access to medical marijuana in Canada, an Ontario Superior Court judge had deemed provisions of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that outlaw the possession and cultivation of pot unconstitutional, opening up the possibility of changes to the way Canadians use and acquire their weed.

The federal government still has three months to appeal the ruling, so we won't know the exact outcome, in all likelihood, for quite some time. But suppose Canada's medical marijuana program were, as a result of all this, to become just about as liberalized as it could possibly get? What would that be like? For answers, we made some phone calls to California.

California legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes in 1996, and in 2003 passed a second piece of legislation that established further protections for users and distributors. Whereas in Canada prospective medpot patients need to find a doctor willing to prescribe weed for one of a short list of Health Canada–approved diseases (or otherwise find a specialist who can vouch, in writing, for pot's efficacy in treating a disease that isn't listed), the standard for marijuana treatment, in the States, is a little looser.

- Read the Entire Article at Torontoist.