Mugglehead reports..
Advocacy group TheraPsil is teaming up with lawyers to pressure the government to grant access and develop regulations
More than ever, Canadians want to use psychedelics as medicine to relieve severe mental distress, but after a promising stretch of granted exemptions, regulator Health Canada appears to be stalling the process.
As applications from patients to use psilocybin pile up, their requests are being neglected, advocates say.
And legal experts think patients are entitled to a reply, and are working alongside advocates to compel the government to give answers and provide access to treatment otherwise prohibited by drug laws.
“The mandate of Health Canada should not be to oppress patients to make them feel judged for using a medicine,” says Spencer Hawkswell, CEO of advocacy group TheraPsil. “It should be to help them safely do it.”
TheraPsil is a Victoria-based non-profit organization that helps people legally access psilocybin for treatment. The organization is asking Minister of Health Patty Hajdu to develop regulations for using psilocybin medically, and to provide a legal source.
So far, the organization has helped 34 patients and 19 healthcare professionals across Canada receive exemptions via section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
TheraPsil has supported people like Jim Daswell, who suffers from cancer, anxiety, depression and PTSD, but doesn’t qualify for end-of-life treatment.
Daswell has been waiting months to hear back from Health Canada.
“And the current approach that the government is taking towards us is — I think — unfair, and that people who have cancers in remission, severe anxiety or severe depression, live every day with a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads,” Daswell said during a TheraPsil webinar this week.
To deprive people of a known cure, which is safe when done in a proper medical or clinical environment is an amazing unfairness, he says.
Lawyers demand exemptions and regulations for psilocybin
Toronto-based lawyer Paul Lewin was retained by TheraPsil to threaten legal action on the behalf of patients. He wrote a letter demanding Hajdu grant exemptions to applicants awaiting approval, and to commit to psilocybin regulations without delay.
“I have been directed to start bringing court proceedings which will include mandamus applications and, soon after, an application challenging the constitutionality of the CDSA (probably also the Food and Drugs Act R.S.C., 1985, c. F-27 and Food and Drug Regulations C.R.C., c. 870 (“FDRs”)) if the s. 56 exemption applications supported by TheraPsil are not granted within 14 days and the government does not move towards reasonable regulation,” reads the letter.
Nicholas Pope is an Ottawa-based human rights lawyer who recently applied for a mandamus for a patient who hasn’t heard back from the Minister since March.
A mandamus is an order from a superior court that compels a public authority to perform an action required by law, in this case to provide a yes or no response to a patient application.
Read full article at. https://mugglehead.com/advocates-take-legal-action-against-health-canada-for-delaying-patient-access-to-psilocybin/
