Leaderboard

A bit of an update 'Suicide headache' patient granted magic mushroom access after Health Canada U-turn After a federal judge’s scolding for its “unreasonable” and “unintelligible” handling of a Calgary man’s bid for legal access to psilocybin for excruciating headaches, Health Canada is backing down. The federal health agency has granted cluster headache patient Jody Lance emergency access to psilocybin, a psychedelic compound found in “magic mushrooms.” Lance’s win comes two weeks after Federal Court Judge Simon Fothergill ruled Health Canada wholly disregarded legal arguments that Lance has a Charter right to medical grade psilocybin. Health Canada’s initial refusal to grant Lance access to the drug under its Special Access Program also lacked the “requisite degree of justification, intelligibility and transparency,” Fothergill wrote. Health Canada’s assessors tried to argue that other modalities hadn’t been ruled out, drawing criticism from Lance’s legal team that it’s easier to qualify for euthanasia in Canada than it is to access novel therapies for headache relief. In order to be eligible for MAID — medical aid in dying — people don’t have to first exhaust all available treatments options. Health Canada’s reversal comes after Fothergill ordered a “redetermination” by a different decision-maker. Health Canada had 14 days to render a new decision, a deadline that expired last Friday.