EDMONTON—With the legal doors now open on cannabis, some advocates are asking if there’s still a place for medical marijuana in the equation or is the federal government just burning the joint from both ends.That’s what 64-year-old cannabis activist Linda Northcott is wondering. “Whether you produce for yourself, for your family, is there now a real need for medical?” she said.In 2011, Northcott turned her Eastwood home, next to Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton, into what she calls the Cannabis Cottage — a community resource where medical users go to use their prescriptions or work them into other consumable products, like honey, spice, butters, creams, extracts, and more.She doesn’t charge for her services, considering herself a volunteer attending to society’s sick.“Thousands of people are dealing with health disorders that need immediate attention,” Northcott said. “Through the cannabis world, this is where these people want to try and get relief.”As of legalization day, she estimates about 30 users, between the ages of 18 and 92, visit her on a regular basis, just to drop by and smoke a joint or learn how to cook their cannabis into something they’re comfortable with.But now that recreational weed can be purchased legally in Alberta, whether online through the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission website, or at one of the six stores currently operating in Edmonton, she’s opened the cottage to anyone with legal product, and expects to have more knocking on her door in the coming months.In January, the Canadian Medical Association submitted a proposal to Health Canada arguing that there is no need for both recreational and medicinal systems to give Canadians access to cannabis.With retail outlets, the association suggested that doctors no longer need to authorize cannabis use once it is legalized because the substance will be available to those who wish to use it ̵ ...
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