Ottawa on track to spend $200M per year on cannabis for veterans

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Ottawa is reimbursing a document variety of veterans for medical marijuana, with new figures displaying the federal authorities shelled out greater than $150 million within the final fiscal yr — greater than double the quantity simply three years in the past.

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And that’s solely the start because the figures from Veterans Affairs Canada reveal the federal government is on monitor to spend almost $200 million this yr as an increasing number of former service members ask the federal government to pay for his or her hashish.

Whereas consultants and advocates are unsure concerning the causes for the surge, they agree concerning the want for extra info on the actual advantages and potential harms of medical marijuana for veterans — and taxpayers paying for it.

“We desperately want higher proof to know if these insurance policies … and if the present utilization is prone to have extra profit or do extra hurt,” mentioned Jason Busse, affiliate director of the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Medicinal Hashish Analysis at McMaster College.

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“We don’t know that proper now.”

Veterans Affairs began reimbursing a small variety of former army personnel for his or her medical hashish in 2008, at which level the approvals have been granted on a particularly restricted foundation and with the approval of a medical specialist.

The transfer adopted a collection of court docket choices greater than 20 years in the past that first allowed a authorized exemption for the consumption of medical marijuana from felony prosecution.

Then in 2014, Well being Canada relaxed its guidelines round who might authorize using medical marijuana to Canadians and for what situations and circumstances. The brand new guidelines didn’t put a restrict on the quantity of pot that might be licensed, or the fee.

Veterans Affairs on the time was reimbursing 112 ex-service members for his or her pot, at a price of $409,000. By the next yr, that quantity had elevated to greater than 600, at a complete value of greater than $1.7 million — with no finish to the rise in sight.

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Figures offered by the division to Veterans Affairs Minister Lawrence MacAulay in June for questions within the Home of Commons present the federal government reimbursed greater than 18,000 ex-military members for $153 million in medical marijuana claims in 2021-22.

“For fiscal yr 2022-23, program expenditures are forecasted to be $195.2 million,” provides the word.

The skyrocketing claims and prices have continued regardless of the Liberal authorities determination in 2016 to restrict claims to a few grams per day at $8.50 per gram, with an allowance of as much as 10 grams per day with medical authorization.

These limits resulted in an explosion of anger from veterans and advocates who mentioned the bounds would negatively have an effect on them, although the word to MacAulay mentioned one in 5 veterans was receiving greater than three grams per day.

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By comparability, Well being Canada says the variety of Canadians throughout the nation registered to make use of medical marijuana, which is often paid for by insurance coverage firms, fell to 257,000 in December 2021 from 345,000 in October 2018.

Officers on the B.C.-based Veterans Transition Community, which supplies peer assist and counselling applications for former Armed Forces members, have seen the explosive progress in medical marijuana use by veterans firsthand lately.

“Seeing these numbers … of simply the expansion yr over yr, to my thoughts, it matches with what we’ve seen by way of how commonplace it’s develop into within the veterans’ care panorama,” mentioned govt director Oliver Thorne.

The community’s nationwide clinic director Dr. Paul Whitehead estimated round half of veterans taking part within the group’s applications now use some form of hashish product for medical causes, although the precise kind, frequency and dosage varies considerably.

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Specialists cited quite a few potential causes for the rise, together with the COVID-19 pandemic, broader consciousness, much less stigma round hashish use, and the emergence of a multimillion-dollar trade round medical pot for veterans.

Some veterans and advocates have argued that the rise of medical hashish has helped cut back using opioids and different narcotics.

Whereas he couldn’t say whether or not that was true, Whitehead reported a lower in alcohol use amongst his group’s purchasers.

But he and others additionally pointed to the various questions that stay about if medical marijuana actually helps veterans — and if that’s the case, how and why.

“We really feel assured there may be completely some profit as a result of veterans inform us that, and so they inform us that continuously,” mentioned Thorne. “However we don’t know the how. And I believe that’s what we actually have to know: how does it work? Why does it work?”

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Busse has been making an attempt to reply a few of these questions at McMaster. What he’s found to this point is a paucity of actual knowledge concerning the impacts of medical marijuana, with what is accessible displaying little to no influence on most individuals with continual ache or sleep issues.

Even these research which have been carried out have been extraordinarily restricted, Busse added, with little details about the influence on these affected by post-traumatic stress dysfunction and even the long-term impacts of utilizing hashish.

The dearth of concrete info comes regardless of the federal authorities having repeatedly promised through the years to fund analysis on the problem. Busse blamed Well being Canada rules and pink tape for having prevented large-scale scientific research.

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“It was simply (this week) that we lastly bought approval to run our first trial, regardless of having gotten funding for it over two years in the past,” he mentioned. “And I do know that numerous firms have merely given up on doing scientific trials in Canada.”

Veterans Affairs wouldn’t publicly communicate to any anticipated adjustments to its reimbursement guidelines, however officers informed MacAulay in June that as it’s “an evolving space of remedy, Veterans Affairs Canada is recurrently reviewing the most recent accessible proof and adjusting our coverage as wanted.”

Whereas Thorne and Whitehead have heard veterans testify to the advantages of medical marijuana, and the Veterans Transition Community doesn’t assist limiting entry, there are considerations that some former service members will use the drug to keep away from their psychological trauma fairly than face it.

“We’d like to see the numbers of spending go up every year for counselling applications, whether or not it’s ours or it’s every other,” Thorne mentioned. “We’d like to see that comparable type of uptake.”