#DontTaxMedicine
Dear Patient Advocacy Partners and Friends,
For those of you interested in the below issue of taxing medical Cannabis please feel free to share this campaign. I will send links and graphics when IT has caught up.
As you may have heard on November 10th, the Department of Finance announced a proposal to apply excise tax to both non-medical and medical cannabis. This email serves as a heads up that you can share with your group prior to our call for action.
Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana (CFAMM) members, who likely are some of your members as well, have expressed their anger, frustration, and helplessness over this announcement and we’ve listened. With a lack of insurance coverage and GST/HST already applied to medical cannabis, this proposal will lead to further affordability challenges for patients using cannabis for medical purposes. Medical cannabis must be treated as other prescribed medicines and accordingly be exempt from all taxes.
You or your organization may not have a stance on the benefits, safety and efficacy of medical cannabis but likely you agree taxing medicine is wrong.
CFAMM is leading a campaign called #DontTaxMedicine (see DontTaxMedicine.ca) to ensure patients' have affordable access to their medicine. We have already received support from physicians, government and several patient advocacy groups like you. We are strongly encouraging you to spread the word to your members that taxing medicine is wrong. At the link you can see above, patient and supporters can send a letter that will be sent to their local MPs, the Ministers of Health and Finance, and Finance Canada's consultation on Excise Tax. Our members will have the ability to add their personal story to the letter if they wish.
We are just waiting on a few IT approvals behind the scenes but within the next few hours our campaign will be launched and you will receive a plug and play toolkit and instructions on how to empower your members through social media.
We thank you for your support of CFAMM and look forward to continued collaboration on behalf of those using medical cannabis as a treatment option in our shared community.
Stay tuned for our launch and instructions to follow later today. In the meantime if you have additional questions please let me know.
Best regards,
Gerald Major
289-680-8736