Tories Plan Ban on Private Medical Marijuana Growers

Licensed individual growers are cultivating too much weed, say police. Obviously, we should ban them.

The Conservative government is planning to stop licensing individual medical marijuana growers, effectively leaving only industrial firms, of which there is one in Canada, and patients themselves to grow the plant. Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq will phase in some changes to Canada's medical marijuana framework over the coming years, such as making it easier for doctors to prescribe marijuana as a treatment for a variety of ailments. The move to clamp down on individual growers, who provide much of the pot smoked by the 10,000 or so licensed patients, comes at the urging of police associations and municipalities, which say individual growers often produce far more than what is allowed. Patients have long complained that the lone industrial manufacturer, Saskatchewan-based Prairie Plant Systems, produces low-grade weed at too high a price.