evidence to understand if these policies and if the current usage is likely to have more benefit or do more harm,” said Jason Busse, associate director of the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Medicinal Cannabis Research at McMaster University.
In 2004 Health Canada eased its rules around who could authorize the use of medical marijuana to Canadians and for what conditions and circumstances. The new rules didn’t put a limit on the amount of pot that could be authorized, or the cost.
There is no end in sight for the reimbursement program as Veterans Affairs at the time was reimbursing 112 ex-service members for their pot, at a cost of $409,000. By the following year, that number had increased to more than 600, at a total cost of more than $1.7 million.
Advocates are also looking into other forms of payment that can help veterans, such as increase funding for counselling and wellbeing programs. This may have an impact on the marijuana usage among veterans, experts are sure to see a decline in usage if these programs had more funding to make more services available for the veterans.
“Seeing those numbers of just the growth year over year, to my mind, it fits with what we’ve seen in terms of how commonplace it’s become in the veterans’ care landscape,” said executive director Oliver Thorne.
“We’d love to see the numbers of spending go up each year for counselling programs, whether it’s ours or it’s any other,” Thorne said. “We’d love to see that similar kind of uptake.”
Experts cited a number of potential reasons for the increase, including the COVID-19 pandemic, broader awareness, less stigma around cannabis use, and the emergence of a multimillion-dollar industry around medical pot for veterans.
