Pubdate: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 Source: National Post (Canada) Copyright: 2010 David Saul Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286 Author: David Saul POT WOULD MAKE IT A HEALTHY COOKIE Re: Politicians Are As Pig-Headed About Health Care As Dr. Duckett Was About Eating His Cookie, Tasha Kheiriddin, Nov. 23. Tasha Kheiriddin ends her tale of cookies-before-a-press-conference with what she sees as the elephant in the room -- that our beloved state funded, single-payer monopoly of health care is financially unsustainable. Her solution to clean up all the elephant dung? To bring out the shovels of private health insurance premiums and user fees. Forget about the other elephants of aging population, dramatic increased spending on screening investigative testing, whopping cost overruns for provincial drug benefit payments, unnecessary patient demands for testing, etc. However, don't get rid of the cookie. Lace it instead with marijuana, using the Health Canada Medical Marijuana Program. Benefits include: better pain control, less nausea from cancer chemotherapy, better sleep, improvements in mood stabilization, less costs for opiate (narcotic) medications and weekly pain injection treatments, cost saving via reduced diagnostic testing, decreases in MD/emerge/lab visits (and costs). And at the end of the day, if a sick patient is a little "high," what's wrong with that? Dr. David Saul, exclusively practicing cannabinology, Toronto. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D