Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 03/01) - Rae Celotti says her husband, Louciano, would have gladly smoked marijuana while undergoing treatment for cancer of the esophagus at Edmonton's Cross Cancer Clinic in 1998-99 -- if it had been legal to do so at the time.

The feds announced Monday it is now legal to prescribe marijuana for terminally ill patients. - photo illustration by Robert Dall

Unfortunately, Monday's announcement by federal Health Minister Allan Rock to allow physicians to prescribe marijuana to terminally ill patients came three years too late for the Celotti family.

Celotti says neither herself or her husband ever smoked marijuana before, nor even condoned it, but once the effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatment began to take their toll on his cancer-racked body, it became clear that the legally prescribed painkillers given him were simply not helping.

"When we had the last appointment, the doctor offered liquid codeine and morphine to treat the pain," Celotti recalls.

"But the doctor said, 'you didn't hear this from me, but if you get your hands on some marijuana that's the best pain medicine.'"

NWT Medical Association president Dr. Ken Seethram says he is unaware of any patients in the territory who have made requests for legalized marijuana, or if any family physicians have recommended it.

He does say, however, that some doctors in the North are leery of the federal government's plan to allow prescription marijuana.

"Marijuana has not had a lot of evidence, based support for it yet," says Seethram.

The main problem, Seethram says, is that there are no clinical practice guidelines in place to prescribe marijuana for treating pain.

He argues that marijuana potency differs from source to source and therefore, it is unlikely that uniform dosages can be prescribed by physicians with any amount of accuracy.

"If I was to prescribe you two marijuana cigarettes, there is no way to tell what the dose and potency is, and that's a real concern," says Seethram.

A true benefit

Dr. Andre Corriveau, the NWT chief medical health officer, on the other hand, has a different opinion of marijuana's usefulness as a painkiller.

While Corriveau -- like Seethram -- worries over the long-term effects of taking the drug, he says he feels there is nothing wrong in allowing terminally ill patients to ease their pain by smoking marijuana.

"My personal opinion is that some people would benefit from the active ingredients in marijuana," says Corriveau.

"It is being claimed that there is nothing else there to make the patients feel better right now, but hopefully we will have something in the future that will have the same results (as marijuana)."

Corriveau also says changing attitudes in society towards marijuana have opened a door, allowing physicians to better examine its usefulness to medicine.

"I think personally there's been a big change to the way we've treated marijuana in the past," says Corriveau.

"The question is, how do we weave this benefit back into the system?"

An agonizing death

Celotti says her husband, a heavy smoker, decided not to try obtaining any marijuana because he feared being caught by the police and worried that he would seem a hypocrite to his 23-year-old son.

He died in April 1999 after lingering on with cancer for eight agonizing months.

In the end, Celotti came to believe that her husband would have lived his last days more peacefully had he had access to marijuana.

She says that as Louciano became addicted to the narcotic painkillers prescribed him, so too did they begin to lose their effectiveness.

Celotti is currently the program director for the local multiple sclerosis support group. She is not aware of any members among the group using marijuana to treat the debilitating pain caused by the disease, but she says she would not try to dissuade anyone from using it if they wanted to.

"It's (marijuana) a heck of a lot better on the system than the other chemicals they can give you," Celotti says.

"I think it's great," she says of Rock's announcement to legalize prescribed marijuana.

"I'm glad it's legalized now."