If any good has come from the unconstitutional MMPR and its licensed producers, it is recognition that Health Canada is not untouchable. The public civil servants working for the federal bureaucracy are not immune to mistakes.
But, unlike an entrepreneur who makes a mistake, civil servants aren’t at risk of losing their operations and, in a lot of cases, even their jobs.
Health Canada still trudges along and has been tasked at creating new medical cannabis regulations, despite previous colossal failures. This is what happens when political decisions override the purchasing power of consumers in a free-and-fair market.
So, if any good has come from this debacle, it’s the growing recognition that Health Canada is not best-suited for delivering health-care goods and services.
For starters, from a constitutional stand-point, health-care is a provincial issue. If the federal Health Canada bureaucracy is to exist, its power and influence should be minimal and constrained by provincial concerns.
Second, “health-care” is not a homogenous blob. There are a variety of skills and resources in health-care fields. Some goods, services, and skills are more widely demanded than others, some are more durable over long period of time, while others are specific and specialized.
How could a handful of bureaucrats in Ottawa coordinate such a large industry to meet the individual demands of Canadian patients? Hint: they can’t.
Following the Soviet-economic model, Health Canada has no way of allocating this intricate array of capital, land, and labour in a way that is superior to free-and-fair markets. Even the “price-less” delivery is paid for, in time.
Waiting lists are the price Canadians pay for a cash-less health care system.
As such — doctors, nurses, and specialists aren’t entrepreneurs but civil servants. They obviously produce value for people but they don’t produce wealth. Their income is derived from the taxpayer and as seniors and baby-boomers outnumber young people, the sustainability of this system is on shaky ground.
The best health-care is preventive, and that is why cannabis is smashing old paradigms about health and well-being.
While some doctors and nurses fear a plant with over 1000 years of history as a medicinal herb, and while Health Canada takes orders from political gatekeepers who do not view cannabis as “an approved drug or medicine,” entrepreneurs have taken matters into their own hands.
Medical cannabis dispensaries are called such because cannabis is medicine, even if you think you’re using it for recreational purposes.
The fact that Health Canada has repeatedly dropped the ball on this is a clear indication that government monopolies should not be in charge of something so important as the health and well-being of individual Canadians and their families.
The alternative isn’t the American “for-profit” insurance scam, but a truly free-and-fair market where doctors and nurses can be entrepreneurs and can (and likely will) prescribe cannabis without fear of judgment from politically motivated colleges and bureaucracies.