by Rady Ananda
Activist Post
October 1, 2013
Medical marijuana patients in Canada can expect a 50-100% increase in the cost of medication next year, all so that large commercial interests can monopolize the habilitative herb, CBC News reports.
Health Canada has banned private-dwelling production of this 34-million-year-old plant, because the Mounties complained about missing out on taxes for weed sold outside the licensed market. Actually, they called the activity “criminal” because, after all, no matter that the plant is safer and more effective than many lab-drugs, the government criminalized it.
The 4,200 small growers, who are limited to selling to only two patients, must close down all operations by March 2014, or apply for licensing under the new regime which has much stronger security protocols, necessitating serious infrastructure upgrades and paperwork protocols.
Users will be required to buy only from the large-scale factory farms, because – we all know – factory farms are so much better for the environment and the local economy.
In June, Canada passed new regulations banning pot “home grown” by cannabis patients, and bowed to pharmacist refusal to sell the herb, The Province reports, referring to the potential for break-ins and theft. It’s okay to sell highly addictive and destructive oxycontin, barbiturates and amphetamines, and, lawd knows, no pill head would ever break into a pharmacy for these drugs.
Over two-thirds of Canada’s 37,359 approved medical marijuana users grow their own under a license, some for as low as $1 a gram. (Mail order buyers pay around $5 a gram.) Home production is being criminalized so that major corporations can overcharge the sick and dying at the rate of $7.60 – $10 a gram.
The CBC News report characterized the profit potential under Canada’s new weed regime as “enormous” for the big companies, estimating a $1.3 billion business in 2014. No doubt. It’s easy to get rich when you criminalize your competition.
Genetically modified strains can also be sold without notice to patients, since Canada lacks a right-to-know policy regarding GM products. The new policy deliberately defeats the “know your farmer” notion, so patients will be stuck ingesting whatever is engineered into the plant.
Though small ops are being wiped out, Canada will allow cannabis imports. Nice to know the nation is doing so well economically that small-time growers don’t need the income. And we can be sure that creative inventions like the one below will fall prey to pesticide laden plants in factory labs:
A Tacoma, WA man got 15 years (!) in prison for designing and operating eight of these ‘Ferris Wheel’ growers that rotated over 1,500 plants under grow lights while periodically spraying them with a nutrient solution.
Heaven forbid cost-effective treatment for a wide variety of illnesses could be manufactured in the home, naturally, organically and safely. No, no, Big Pharma and the biotech industry would lose profits, and predatory capitalism as featured in the West doesn’t allow anyone to be independent of it. These are the real criminals in all of this, along with their crony regulators.
We would expect nothing less from Health Canada who fired its food safety scientists for exposing the dangers of genetically modified bovine growth hormone.
Rady Ananda is the creator of Food Freedom News and COTO Report, Rady Ananda’s work has appeared in several online and print publications, including four books. With a B.S. in Natural Resources from Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture, Rady tweets @geobear7 and @RadysRant .
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