I would like to clarify a few issues regarding the Health Canada Medicinal Marihuana Access Regulations ( MMAR ) program.

Physicians do not "prescribe pot." Every Canadian citizen qualifies automatically for MMAR if they meet the Health Canada criteria-anyone providing evidence of a qualifying condition, and/or anyone who's been to a specialist for their condition. This has nothing to do with the doctor's views on the matter-patients either qualify or they do not.

Doctors authorize for MMAR by filling out forms declaring that the patient has the condition. This automatically authorizes the patient to possess and grow marihuana. The patient instructs the doctor as to the daily quantity and method by which they consume marihuana. This is much different than a physician prescribing a medication-where the doctor instructs the patient.

A 16-year-old Langley boy died early Sunday morning after reportedly mixing ecstasy with other pharmaceutical drugs. The B.C. Coroners Service is now investigating whether paramethoxymethamphetamine (PMMA), an adulterant added to ecstasy believed to have recently killed at least 10 people in B.C. and Alberta, may have been a factor.

The boy reportedly took the drugs on Saturday night with several other people, according to the agency. Early Sunday, they heard him collapse and called 911. Paramedics transported the teen to Langley Memorial Hospital, however he could not be revived. It is not known what other drugs may have been in the boy's system.

"Toxicology testing will be completed as quickly as possible to determine whether the use of ecstasy was a factor in the death, and if so, whether the ecstasy tablet included the presence of PMMA," the Coroners Service said in a news release Monday. It is also reviewing the province's 16 ecstasy-related deaths in 2011, as PMMA had never before been found in ecstasy and was not routinely tested for previously.

Ivan Georgiev, 39, is charged with several offences, including production of a controlled substance and possession of crystal meth for the purpose of trafficking. The federal Crown alleges he converted his Warren Road garage into a clandestine drug lab, where he cooked up large quantities of the illegal drug.

The lab was found after police raided the rural property in June 2009 following several weeks of surveillance. Health Canada chemist Sarita Jazwal told the court she found enough raw materials, including ephedrine, red phosphorous and hydriodic acid, to produce roughly 11 kilograms of crystal meth.

The man was jailed last year for three years on top of eight months he had served since his arrest after he pleaded guilty to weapons offences stemming from the same search that revealed the drug lab. The guns were found after police executed search warrants at Georgiev’s Pritchard property in 2010.

Paramethoxy-metamphetamine ( PMMA ) has been associated with at least five ecstasy deaths in B.C. over the last six months. On Jan. 16, the BC Coroners Service confirmed that it was investigating a fourth 2012 fatality believed to be the result of an ecstasy overdose - a 16-year-old Langley male.

"It's a learning process for us; we're gathering information as we go along," said chief coroner Lisa Lapointe. Over the past six years, the rates of ecstasy-related fatalities in the province have more than doubled.

Whereas 2006 saw seven deaths in the province, the three years leading up to 2011 each saw at least 20 people lose their life to the drug. Last weekend's death brings the early 2012 count to four. "Does that mean that we'll see these numbers continue to climb over the years? We certainly hope not," Lapointe said.

Can that message be driven home any more acutely than it has in this community? In the past five weeks, the popular man-made drug has taken two lives, and is responsible for another that hangs in the balance.

On Nov. 27, Tyler Miller, 20, took ecstasy. He was a gifted Abbotsford musician and student, with great career plans. It's all over. He was dead in eight hours.

On Dec. 19, 17-year-old Cheryl McCormack of Abbotsford ingested ecstasy with some friends ostensibly as a weight loss aid. She became unresponsive, and three days later, she died. She was a bright, fun and athletic teen.

On New Year's Eve, a 24-year-old Abbotsford woman engaged in "recreational" use of ecstasy with three friends. By 6 a.m. she was in critical condition in hospital, where she remains today.

A 24-year-old Abbotsford woman is battling for her life after ingesting ecstasy with three friends on New Year's Eve. Abbotsford Police Const. Ian MacDonald said the woman, whose name has not been released, was at a home in the 33700 block of George Ferguson Way when she became unconscious and unresponsive.

She was treated on scene at about 6 a.m. on New Year's Day by BC Ambulance and Abbotsford Fire Rescue personnel before being transported to hospital. MacDonald said the women, ages 23 to 31, took "numerous" blue ecstasy pills throughout the evening, starting at the residence. They then went out for the night and returned to the home, ingesting the last pills at about 4 a.m. The friends indicated that the victim consumed more pills than they did, MacDonald said.

Police also raided three residential properties as part of the months-long investigation by CFSEU's Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Enforcement Unit. Two men have been taken into custody and police are searching for three others, Whalen said.

More than 150 police from various forces executed the search warrants simultaneously beginning at 5 a.m. Thursday, including members of the RCMP, Vancouver Police, Municipal and RCMP Emergency Response Teams and the Clandestine Laboratories Unit.

The largest lab was found in East Vancouver in a warehouse at 2659 Lillooet Street where a company named Pharmaceuticals is based. Throughout the day Thursday, firefighters, hazard materials specialists and police remained at the scene just off East Broadway and Lillooet. Half a block was behind police tape.

The July 2011 raid was significant not only because it netted five arrests for suspected drug production but because it was the culmination of three years of lobbying the federal government to make illegal the possession of chemicals used to produce methamphetamine and ecstasy.

That chance 2007 meeting on the Bowen Island ferry between John Weston, now MP for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, and Cpl. Richard De Jong of the North Vancouver RCMP had all the makings of a Hollywood screenplay:

An aspiring young politician promises a veteran street cop he'll take the gloves off law enforcement to help them fight street-drug manufacturers if he's sent to the capital. "He offered to give me a legal education on illegal drugs," Weston told The Outlook, "knowing that I might be elected and knowing that he was right that I perhaps needed an education on something that was so important to young people and to families in the riding I now represent."

A promise kept: Weston goes to Ottawa and Cpl. De Jong's plea is echoed in the country's highest halls of power. But the barriers of bureaucracy went up and the new anti-drug bill that seemed a slam dunk for Weston became a lengthy battle of attrition with fellow politicians and lawmakers.

Dr. Mark Tyndall, chief of infectious diseases at the Ottawa Hospital, says he thinks this is a very important decision. “I expected this, but not with a unanimous vote,” he says. “Not only does this decision mean the clinic should be open, but it makes drug addiction a health issue, not a criminal justice issue.”

Mark Kleiman is a veteran of the drug-rhetoric wars. The problem with the drug debate, he says, "is that it's conducted between the disciples of Michel Foucault and the disciples of the Marquis de Sade." Foucault believed that the only crime is punishment. De Sade thought the meaner the punishment, the better.

Mr. Kleiman, a bushy bearded liberal Democrat, is a professor of public policy at UCLA and a leading expert on drug policy. His new book, Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know, is an invaluable guide to the facts. He favours harm-reduction programs such as Insite. But he also thinks that people who endorse the disease model of addiction can be just as ideological and simple-minded as the law-and-order crowd. "Some disease proponents ignore the fact that drug abuse is a disorder of the will," he says. "In my view, disease and bad habits are completely consistent descriptions of the same behaviour."