Many years ago the Canadian government was forced in the courts to allow for some kind of legal exemption for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians that they admitted were legitimate users of medicinal Cannabis. For information about the court cases, please consult the information section of the Toronto Hemp Company (THC) website.

Since the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations were put into place thousands of Canadians have obtained an MMAR exemption, often with great difficulty thanks to a shortage of cooperation from Canadian doctors and related agencies.

Among the many serious problems that have been encountered over the years, perhaps the greatest (aside from the difficulty involved in obtaining exemption) has been the lack of options for available medicine once patients finally were granted their exemptions.

Everyone’s heard over and over about the government’s messed-up marijuana mine-shaft, a facility near Flin-Flon Manitoba in which a company has been growing huge amounts of medicinal cannabis on behalf of our government intended for sale to MMAR exemptees. Serious concerns about the safety, quality and effectiveness of the ‘Flin-Flon Crop’ continue unaddressed, including those about the practice of ‘gamma-irradiating’ the ‘medicine’ and the dreadful lack of variety with only one available ‘strain.’

While compassion centres remain the best, while as of yet unauthorized, option for most exemptees, another often difficult option available is for the patients to ‘grow their own,’ or to designate someone else to grow medicinal marijuana for them with a Health Canada Personal-use Production License (PPL) or Designated-person Production License (DPL).

While just about everyone knows that we (a handful of compassion centres across Canada) are on the cutting edge when it comes to the dispensation of cannabis medicine, it is important to note that we are also on the forefront as far as regulatory change, and experimentation regarding those boundaries, is concerned. Canada’s compassion centres have been instrumental in many court challenges on behalf of medicinal marijuana users and we do all that we can to push for more fairness and compassion for all sick and suffering Canadians. There have been many important court cases and resulting required changes to the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations and the legal climate surrounding cannabis cultivation and provision, all kinds of ground-breaking efforts across our Nation. Recent court decisions and regulatory changes have opened many interesting doors for organizations and companies desiring to enter and modify the medical marijuana marketplace, and with your help we can continue to push open these doors and improve the climate for legitimate medicinal marijuana users and cultivators everywhere.

Aside from our primary function of dispensing medicinal cannabis products of all kinds to Canadians suffering from a wide range of illnesses, and many other public service roles that we perform, the Toronto Compassion Centre (TCC) works to help Canadians obtain Health Canada Licenses, and to connect Health Canada Licensed Canadians with persons willing to serve as their Designated (or hired) growers.

For more information about these services, please EMAIL US, we’re happy to help however we’re able!

Some potentially helpful resources for MMAR applicants:

- Letters for your doctor, and the CMPA Doctor’s release

1. -Health Canada’s Medical Marihuana Access Website
   

A note to people seeking cooperative Canadian doctors:

We are asked basically on a daily basis for referrals to doctors willing to sign the Health Canada MMAR License Application forms for patients having trouble getting into the program. That we are asked so frequently is an obvious indication of the huge problems, and the unconstitutionality (as found by the courts even), of the difficulty of access to the Health Canada program. While we obviously must admit that we know of quite a large number of doctors who have been willing and able to sign either or both of A) Our TCC Application Forms and B) The Health Canada forms... and thus feel that we could be in a position to help people with this type of question at least as beneficially as anybody else could... and while we feel it’s part of our mandate to help people gain the protection provided by Health Canada Licenses, we are prevented from performing this important function in any real substantial way for the general public due to the cautiousness of the average doctor – their natural and perhaps at least somewhat understandable unwillingness to be ‘referred to’ by a compassion club specifically and primarily because of ‘cannabis friendliness’.

So, the bottom line... While we’d love to just be able to give out, to anyone who asks, our list of doctors who have been helpful, this would be counter-productive and unwise. So what we recommend for all who ask us about finding a friendly doctor is that you join the Club, become a member of the Toronto Compassion Centre (TCC) (membership is not difficult to obtain for legitimate medicinal users - much less so than access to the Health Canada program for example, and we take members from all across Canada!)... That will take care of at least one major issue (access to an amazing and unparalleled variety of cannabis medicine products) and once ‘in the club,’ it would be more reasonable and acceptable for us to share what we can, and what we feel appropriate, about our ‘doctor database’ with you.