tOp: aLBERt LaW; Right: dELOittE nOVEmBER 2018 BCBusiness 23
A strong advocate of cannabis for medi-
cal treatment, Caroline MacCallum says her
patients brought the idea to her. MacCallum
grew up in Newfoundland, where she earned a
pharmacy degree and began medical stud-
ies. After graduating from internal medicine
at
UBC in 2013, she worked at several clinics.
There she met people with a range of health
problems who had turned to cannabis because
other treatments didn't work.
MacCallum was skeptical of the lack of
scienti-c evidence. "But patients were telling
me that it was working," she says. Deciding
to help people access safe medical cannabis,
MacCallum saw how powerful it was: "People
who might have come to me with 10 problems,
it was helping a lot of the conditions, a lot of the
symptoms, and we were able to whittle down
their prescription list."
Today, she is medical director of the Green-
leaf Medical Clinic in Langley, where she has
seen some 3,000 patients. Canada's -rst medi-
cal cannabis clinic, Greenleaf opened in 2011.
It charges patients a fee and uses only Health
Canada–approved cannabis to treat illnesses
ranging from chronic pain and cancer symp-
toms to migraine and addiction.
"We weigh the risks and the bene-ts, and
we educate, and we monitor for drug interac-
tions," says MacCallum, who is also a clinical
instructor with
UBC's department of medicine,
an adjunct professor with the faculty of phar-
maceutical sciences and an associate member
of the palliative care division. She recently won
ethics approval from the university to turn
Greenleaf into a patient registry. With consent,
she can now explore what cannabis varieties
work for particular diseases, she says.
Among other research e'orts, MacCallum is
working with several groups that aim to launch
randomized clinical trials studying cannabis's
e'ect on neurological and psychiatric condi-
tions such as seizures and traumatic brain
injury. This year, she co-authored what she calls
the -rst paper of its kind, for the European Jour-
nal of Internal Medicine, on medical cannabis
administration and dosing. —N.R.
T H E p H y s I C I A N
CAroline MacCAlluM
Medical director, greenleaf Medical Clinic
LIKe A WeeD
size of the recreational
cannabis market, 2019
good MEdicinE
besides prescribing
cannabis, Caroline
macCallum researches
its benefits
Estimated current size
projected legal market size
DiFFerenCe
$470 - $1,590
miLLiOn
DiFFerenCe
$150 - $500
miLLiOn
C A N A D A W E s T
$1.
3
4
-
$
2
.75
Billion
$1.81
-
$
4.
3
4
Billion
$
0.4
2
-
$
0.8
7
Billion
$
0.57
-
$1.
37
Billion
