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Compassion Club in VancouverPHOTO: Radio-Canada / Mylène Briand

On April 20, the date of the celebration of cannabis, voices are being raised to denounce the closure of compassion clubs, those places that distribute cannabis for medical purposes. In an open letter to the Tyee newspaper, eight health researchers plead for compassion clubs. Marilou Gagnon, professor of nursing at the University of Victoria and researcher at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, is one of the signatories of the letter.

We decided to join our voices, because we are studying the effects of cannabis and the effects of harm reduction during this overdose crisis that we are experiencing in British Columbia. We are also interested in these community access points and the importance of these access points and we are concerned to see who is left behind by the dismantling of this systemsays Marilou Gagnon, who deplores the disappearance of almost all compassion clubs in British Columbia since the legalization of cannabis in 2018.