Prof asks university to take high road on prescription pot
Last Updated: Thursday, October 19, 2006 | 11:21 AM ET
CBC News
A Toronto professor wants to smoke his prescription pot at the university where he works and is refusing to step onto campus until he can.
York University professor Brian MacLean says he has clearance from Health Canada for medical marijuana use for an undisclosed illness, but there is no place at work where he can smoke it.
"I have to medicate a lot," he says. "There's no issue here, well, can I restrain my medication on campus? No, I can't."
Until his medical need is accommodated, MacLean is refusing to step onto campus and is holding all of his classes on policing elsewhere.
MacLean says he tries to be discreet by rolling the marijuana to make it look like regular filtered cigarettes and walking to the edges of campus to smoke.
But that's a problem, he says, because there is little privacy and he feels that passersby are passing moral judgment on him.
And he fears that it may be raising more than just a few eyebrows.
"Students come to class and smell it," he said. "They are not going to say anything to me but they are going to talk to other people about it.
"So there are damages to my reputation which I can't specify and I don't know how the university plans to deal with that, but they are going to have to."
MacLean says that the University of Toronto has created a ventilated room for a professor who smokes medical marijuana and wants York to do the same.
Several months ago, he says he quietly submitted the Health Canada paperwork to university administrators, but no action has been taken.
University spokesman Alex Bilyk said the issue had been brought up with the labour relations office and they are now working with the union to work out accommodation.
Bilyk couldn't say when it would be made available.
MacLean says he's already waited two months.
