A group of Canadian military veterans who
say they are suffering from health problems after consuming tainted
medical marijuana is calling on Health Minister Jane Philpott to launch a
formal investigation, saying the department has failed to examine the
problem properly and fairly on behalf of patients.
Scott Wood, a retired military policeman
whose career involved investigating military wrongdoing and guarding
heads of state, said he believes Health Canada is trying to sweep the
problem under the rug without a proper investigation.
The
group’s call for Ms. Philpott to get involved comes after Health Canada
issued a public statement Friday saying it determined there was “low
health risk” posed by several banned pesticides found in medical
marijuana sold by two federally licensed companies.
“Here
are the facts,” Health Canada said, stating that its findings
determined the amount of the banned chemical myclobutanil found was not
enough to pose a “risk of serious adverse health consequences.”
But
Mr. Wood says the facts he has collected differ from Health Canada’s
and there needs to be further examination. He began reaching out to
dozens of affected patients, including veterans, after he came down with
sudden and mysterious health problems last fall after consuming medical
marijuana that was later recalled.
Mr.
Wood, who used the products to help with severe back pain, says he has
since catalogued about 100 patients, and counting, who have each come
down with significant – and oddly similar – health problems that had no
explanation, other than they had each consumed the same tainted
products.
However, when some of these
patients, including Mr. Wood, contacted Health Canada, he says they
received no help. In a recording of Mr. Wood’s phone call to Health
Canada, which was provided to The Globe and Mail, he is told to send his
concerns to a department e-mail address.
Mr.
Wood, 53, says he’s spoken with dozens of veterans who gravitated to
medical marijuana instead of prescription drugs to ease pain from
injuries suffered while serving, or to deal with post-traumatic stress
disorder, who are now experiencing problems. He figures there are
thousands of people exposed, and questions how Health Canada can dismiss
the problem without talking to many of those affected.
“There’s
a commonality – you have people who used the contaminated stuff, and
they’re all showing very similar symptoms,” Mr. Wood said. “There’s the
evidence. You’ve got reasonable, probable belief to say there’s
something going on here.”
When asked for comment on the veterans’ concerns last week, a spokesman for Dr. Philpott did not respond to The Globe.
Symptoms
being reported by patients who consumed products that were later
recalled by Mettrum Ltd. and OrganiGram Inc. include persistent nausea
and vomiting after taking the product, followed by ongoing breathing
problems, rashes and body pain.
Mr.
Wood, who stopped using the products after the first symptoms emerged,
has been taken to the emergency room at his local hospital three times
since then due to sudden breathing difficulties.
He says his
investigation has turned up several unusual symptoms that are consistent
across dozens of patients, including severe itching, joint pain and
periodic abdominal pain. Mr. Wood has also collected photographs from
patients, including himself, who have suffered painful rashes, and
sometimes blistering, around their necks and other areas of the body.
The
situation poses an interesting question: Was Health Canada’s assessment
of the problem accurate, or are these symptoms due to something else?
Mr. Wood believes the sudden emergence of his symptoms after consuming
the products is no coincidence.
“They’re
not doing a field test, they’re not going out and saying: ‘Let’s go
check these people and see what happened.’ Basically they’re hiding
behind numbers, and they’re just hoping everybody goes away and doesn’t
question it,” he said. “These symptoms didn’t come out of nowhere. They
have to be caused by something.”
Mettrum
and OrganiGram are now the subject of two proposed class-action
lawsuits that seek to force the companies to refund money collected from
the recalled products. Mr. Wood said he is not part of those lawsuits,
but is instead trying to get to the bottom of the medical issues for the
group of veterans and others affected.
The
banned chemical myclobutanil is known to emit hydrogen cyanide when
combusted. In its statement Friday, Health Canada said the risks from
the tainted products were deemed to be low because the trace amounts of
myclobutanil found would not have produced enough hydrogen cyanide to
cause a concern. Health Canada also said hydrogen cyanide is a
by-product of smoking cannabis, and it believes the levels from the
myclobutanil would have been less than what is produced normally when
the plant is combusted.
However, Mr.
Wood believes that in focusing solely on the hydrogen cyanide issue,
Health Canada is ignoring other health risks posed by myclobutanil,
which has never been fully studied for inhalation safety, as well as the
risks of pyrethrin and bifenazate, which were also found in the
recalled products, and are not approved for use on cannabis.
Scientists
in the United States and Canada have told The Globe and Mail not enough
is known about the effects of these chemicals on medical marijuana to
understand what the true risks are when inhaled.
Dr.
Jonathan Page, who runs Anandia Labs in B.C., says some of the symptoms
being reported don’t make sense to him based on what is known of
hydrogen cyanide exposure. But Dr. Page said he can’t rule out health
risks from the banned pesticides because little is known about them.
Much of the science on safety is derived from testing on food, rather
than on plants that are smoked.
“We
can’t really tell,” Dr. Page said. “This is the heart of the issue –
each of these pesticides need to be evaluated in the cannabis system,
rather than extrapolation from a food system. … Everybody is operating
on an absence of evidence and data.”
Health
Canada monitors drug side effects through documents called Adverse
Reaction Reports, which are filed by patients and doctors. The
department said Friday that, as of March 6, it received 24 reports
relating to the tainted cannabis problem. Of those, 13 were received
after the announcement of a Canada-wide recall.
The
reports list symptoms such as weight loss, nausea, vomiting, throat
irritation, difficulty breathing, swelling, heart palpitations, movement
disorder, pain and discomfort.
Health
Canada added that the reports are “the opinion or observation of the
individual making the report, and are not, on their own, proof of a
specific substance causing a reaction.”
While
the companies involved have cited the low number of Adverse Reaction
Reports as evidence that the issues have not been significant, the
statistics on these filings are not a good indicator of the severity of a
problem, since many Canadians do not know they should send such
complaints to the department, or know how to do so.
Mr.
Wood believes Health Canada should properly investigate the problem
before dismissing it, because there are people who have become
inexplicably sick. “People are going to their doctors and their doctors
don’t know how to handle it. They aren’t sure because they’ve never
experienced it before,” he said.
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