Showing posts with label marijuana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marijuana. Show all posts

Saturday, 7 May 2016

Loblaw having acquired Shoppers Drug Mart now wishes to dispense medical marijuana






Part I: Loblaw food store chain acquisition of Shoppers Drug Mart with apparent intent to drop Shoppers Home Healthcare division altogether –leaving clients stranded.

Part II: (further below) Loblaw expresses desire to sell Medical Marijuana through its Shoppers Drug Store/Loblaw pharmacies.

Part I

When you buy another company, you also buy any “baggage” that company had accumulated during its years of operation.  You would think that when one company purchases another, the onus is on the purchaser to make sure the seller fulfills any obligations, resolves any problems, correct any errors and address any concerns or misgivings that may now reflect badly on the acquiring company.

You lay down with dogs, you may get some fleas…

In a March 28th, 2014 Globe and Mail[i] article, Loblaw’ CEO Galen Weston announced that the planned purchase of Shoppers Drug Mart by Loblaw Supermarket chain, first announced July 15th 2013[ii], has been finalized.  The announced cost of the transaction was $12.4 billion in cash and stocks.

Also, when you buy a company, you acquire all of its subsidiaries (unless specifically excluded from the deal) as was the case with the above transaction.  Shoppers Drug Mart brought along Shoppers Home Healthcare as part of the package deal.

However, it has become apparent that Loblaw wanted Shoppers only for their pharmaceuticals and had no interest in the greater scope of their Shoppers Home Healthcare division which, in general, supplied devices and aids to physically challenged clients. (eg. wheelchairs, oxygen supplies, walkers, etc.)

Loblaw must have researched Shoppers thoroughly prior to the purchase and no doubt had extensive knowledge of the extraordinarily poor performance of the Home Healthcare branch of their business[iii],[iv],[v],[vi].  I suppose they had planned from the start to divest themselves of the Home Healthcare operation.  Rather than improve the deplorable “service” that Shoppers Home Healthcare provided, they let the operation languish and their clients suffer in frustration.

If I was purchasing a company, I would demand that all aspects of its operation were brought up to acceptable standards before making the purchase.   If not, I would make those changes immediately on purchase so as not to reflect badly on my own company.

With Loblaw’s first announcement of its intent to purchase Shoppers Drug Mart (July 15th, 2013), to when the transaction was finalized (March, 28th, 2014) to when Shoppers Drug Mart (now owned by Loblaw) was divesting itself of the Shoppers Home Healthcare division of its operation (March 22nd, 2016)[vii], a full two years had elapsed –enough time for Loblaw to demand Shoppers Home Healthcare get its act together or for Loblaw to do it themselves after the acquisition.

Obviously Loblaw had plans to drop the Shoppers Home Healthcare division altogether so they expended no finances or energy in bringing the “service” up to standards or doing right by Shoppers’ clients.

Shame on both Shoppers and Loblaw if the intent was always to divest itself of the Shoppers Home Healthcare division.  They continued to allow poor service to be offered and failed to give their clients a sufficient ‘heads up’ to locate alternate healthcare service providers.

However, it’s always about the money, isn’t it….always!

Part II:


 
This week Loblaw’s CEO Galen Weston announced its intent to sell medical marijuana through its Loblaw/Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacies once legalized[viii],[ix].  He was quick to point out that only ‘medical’ not ‘recreational’ drug would be stocked.  In that article “Mr. Weston told shareholders that Loblaw increasingly is focused on bolstering its healthy (sic) care goods and services.” (Obviously those goods and services did not include wheelchair and other disability aids sales and services)

Ontario’s liquor control board’s retail outlet, the LCBO stores were suggested as a retailer for marijuana however is seems that the public prefers that alcohol highs and marijuana highs be sold in different locations.  I suppose that ‘highbrow executives’ don’t want to be seen purchasing their single-malt scotch in the same store where ‘dudes’ buy their doobies!  But I digress…

My concern is that Loblaw/Shoppers Drug Store pharmacies may do as poor a job of dispensing ‘medical marijuana’ as it did with providing service through Shoppers Home Healthcare.  Having had such a poor experience with Shoppers Home Healthcare, I have no intention of giving Shoppers, and now Loblaw/Shoppers any of my business.  I’m sure many others who felt abused by Shoppers Home Healthcare feel the same way I do.

Shoppers Home Healthcare under Shoppers parent company had the sole contract for sales and repairs on articulated wheelchairs (those with special features such as tilt and elevating mechanisms).  I truly hope there will not be a monopoly on the sales of medical marijuana.  If I were ever to decide to use it to relieve my pain and stiffness, I hope that Loblaw/Shoppers would be my only source for the medicine.

Lack of competition creates laziness, complacency and stagnation!

I am still curious as to how the entire system is intended to work once marijuana sales and usage is legalized in Ontario, and Canada as a whole.  Pharmacies will dispense medically prescribed marijuana.  Pot shops have already sprung up selling a variety of marijuana products to the general public intended for recreational use.  Finally, will you be able to grow your own as you can brew your own beer or bottle your own wine?  It seems that you may be able to do so for personal use[x], at least ‘medical’ marijuana users, otherwise you may be a tax evader.  So why would you go to a pharmacy if  you can grow your own unless you wish to pay the price and the tax for a controlled dosage of THC?

To read of my own frustrations with Shoppers Home Healthcare and their total lack of anything that remotely resembles service, click HERE to read my post.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Wednesday, 30 March 2016

Marijuana: Recreational Drug or Serious Medicine?




Just think if Aspirin gave a buzz in addition to relieving headaches.  You might be accused of wanting a high rather than just trying to stop you head from pounding.  You may never have seen it  in your medicine cabinet.

Why are governments, health advocates and doctors so reluctant to accept marijuana/cannabis as a potent legitimate medicine which just happens to have pleasurable side effects?  High-browed officials exhibit shortsightedness and prejudice simply because the substance may have first used recreationally.  Governments and much of the medical establishment see tie-dyed draped, head band wearing, long haired hippies toking away on a giant doobie whenever they hear the word “marijuana”.   “Far-out, man!”

I grew up in the 1960s and many of my idols were of that generation indulging in ‘free love’, psychedelic music, and ‘high times’.  Jim Morrison of the Doors was notorious for always being high.  Paul McCartney of the Beatles was arrested for carrying ‘pot’.  Jimi Hendrix smoked marijuana and died the victim of harder drugs.  My immediate friends all smoked dope and peer pressure was always there to join in.  Yet I resisted and got through the ‘60’s (and to the present) without sampling the wicked weed!


As a victim of a spinal cord injury in 2006, I have lived every day since with severe neurogenic nerve pain, a sensation almost impossible to describe with any accuracy or degree of severity.  Along with the intense and constant nerve pain are the paralytic spasms causing limbs to rhythmically contract and relax, sometime violently, often for hours on end.  There is also the rigidity or tightness (tone) in the affected muscles impedes motion and restricts flexibility.  Marijuana’s primary active ingredient of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and perhaps other constituents has been shown to have a positive effect, reducing all these symptoms significantly.

While I survived the 1960s without trying marijuana,  I would light up immediately if I could get relief from the extreme pain and extensive discomfort I have lived with every second of every hour of every day for the last ten years!!!  Yet how do I approach my doctor for a script, a prescription when many do not wish to get involved or become “pushers”.  How do you shop around for an open-minded doctor when so few physicians are taking on new patients during the doctor drought in my province?  I too have listened too intently to the negative hype and feel embarrassed to ask?  Yet if I could only get some relief!!!!

A National Post article[i] of October 30th, 2011 reports on a Canadian Medical Association Journal study from 2011 that involved 21 patients with neuropathic pain — a common and dreaded condition that causes electric, stabbing pain found that smoked cannabis at low doses reduces pain, improves mood and helps sleep, without making people high. All had “refractory” pain, meaning pain that had defied all traditional treatments.  For patients for whom the treatment works, cannabis can achieve about 30 per cent reduction in pain intensity.

A Toronto Star Article[ii] of May 14th, 2012 relates a University of California study which found that marijuana helps relieve pain and muscle tightness in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) sufferers.  Smoking marijuana can relieve muscle tightness, spasticity (contractions) and pain often experienced by those with multiple sclerosis, says research out of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

As you can see, paralysis victims suffer many of the same neurological symptoms as MS sufferers.

Continuing: Rather than rely on self-reporting by patients regarding their muscle spasticity — a subjective measure — health professionals rated each patient’s joints on the modified Ashworth scale, a common objective tool to evaluate intensity of muscle tone.

The researchers found that the individuals in the group that smoked cannabis experienced an almost one-third decrease on the Ashworth scale — 2.74 points from a baseline score of 9.3 — meaning spasticity improved, compared to the placebo group. As well, pain scores decreased by about 50 per cent.

A Daily Mail Online U.K. article[iii] reports of a study published in ‘The Journal of Pain’ suggesting medical marijuana reduces the use of prescription opioids (up to 64%) in those patients battling chronic pain. The findings suggest that prescribing medical marijuana instead of painkillers, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, may help tackle the opioid epidemic that’s currently sweeping the United States (and other countries).  In addition to lower consumption of opioids, the patients in the study also reported fewer side effects from their medications. Furthermore, they reported an overall 45 per cent improvement in quality of life since using marijuana to manage their pain. 

Numerous additional sources and credible studies suggest similar benefits however I know of no large scale national evaluation of marijuana as a serious medicine which has been performed and recognized by government regulating agencies.  Perhaps the negative stigma is to blame.
The previously cited National Post article states that “No drug company wants to evaluate smoked marijuana as a medicine because there’s no money in it for them.”

Other problems remain even after medical and/or recreational usage is legalized.  Who will be eligible? Standardization -what dosage? Who can prescribe?  Can doctors opt out if dissenting? Who will be authorized to dispense the drug – drug stores or possibly liquor stores?  Medical or recreational –Taxation?  Will home grown plants be legal and allowed?

A London (Ontario) Free Press article[iv] from February 24th of 2016 relates: A staffer at the Organic Traveller store in London, Oakes said customers tell him they pay $12 to $16 a gram for approved, greenhouse-grown, poor-quality marijuana, when the street value of home grown is $10 a gram or less.  If people have the capability of producing their own medicine, and more cheaply, he said, “Why, in a free and democratic society, can’t we do that?” 

The article goes on to say that Shoppers Drug Mart has shown interest in dispensing medical (and recreational?) marijuana when finally legalized and dispensing guidelines established.  I truly hope it will not be Shoppers Drug Mart as the total incompetence they exhibited in providing service for the wheelchairs they sold under Shoppers Home Healthcare has me cringe.  You can read about my problems in a previous blog post entitled ‘If You WantService Like This, I Recommend…’

How many people are we speaking of?  The previous National Post articles states that as of Sept. 30, 2011, 12,216 people in Canada held authorization to possess marijuana for medical purposes.  The above 2016 London Free Press article states that as many as 40,000 Canadians have prescriptions for medicinal marijuana.

I have a hard time accepting these figures as that would mean that the number of people who have obtained prescriptions for medical marijuana in Canada has increased by 28,000 people in the last five years.

Could we really be such a laid back, mellow nation with a bad case of the munchies?

One final note; in adults, marijuana has no serious direct side effects.  It is difficult to overdose on marijuana.  There has never been a proven overdose death directly caused by marijuana in humans.  (Stupidity yes, marijuana No)  You don’t necessarily have to get ‘high’ to reap the benefits.  Low doses of the active ingredient may be all that is required to substantially improve the quality of some patients.  Some have suggested that the drug might eventually be taken orally as a pill rather than through smoking.  As a lifelong non-smoker, that would be fine with me.


I’m stiff, I spasm, I hurt badly.  Where do I sign up for relief?




 *   *   *
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)