Last week, Galen G. Weston—the president and executive chairman of Loblaw—announced that his pharmacies want in on the medical marijuana business.
Primarily, Weston argued that pharmacists are well positioned to dispense the drug in a safe manner.
“We’re an industry that is extremely effective at managing controlled substances,” he said. “It gives pharmacists the opportunity to work directly in real time with patients as opposed to doing it through the mail, working on their doses and making sure it actually has the therapeutic effect that it is intended to have.”
According to Weston, while the current mail system—in which patients receive the drug from a licensed producer—does not present any “safety or credibility” issues, patients would be able to experience more consultation if dispensing was done face-to-face.
With this stance, Loblaw supports the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPA) in its efforts to make marijuana more accessible. Last month, the CPA expressed its growing concerns over the use of medical marijuana without pharmacies playing a “front-line role” in patient access.
If granted permission from Ottawa, Loblaw would consider dispensing medical cannabis in all forms at their Shoppers Drug Mart and grocery pharmacy locations.
Currently, under Health Canada’s rules, patients may only buy medical marijuana from licensed producers and are no longer permitted to grow their own—something they were able to do prior to 2013. However, following a B.C. court’s striking down of this law as “unconstitutional,” Ottawa is looking at making changes to these regulations and expects to come to a decision in August.
The Liberal government has also committed to the eventual legalization of recreational marijuana use. Despite this, noted Weston, Loblaw is focused only on the distribution of marijuana for medical use at this time.
