Relieving Pain

He lived as a free soul for years as a young man. He worked in construction, met the woman who became his wife, and they lived for years as "free souls", travelling throughout the United States and Canada. Rob Kamermans did volunteer work at a Carmelite monastery in California for three years. They had five children. And in his late thirties he decided to study at medical school. At age 48, in 1994 he began practising as a physician, and his wife Mary, took up nursing.

In 2008 they set up a family practise in Coe Hill, Ontario, north of Belleville. Their clinic was open to high-needs, socially-marginal people. That clinic operated at a financial loss, and to help make ends meet Dr. Kamermans worked at the emergency departments of nearby hospitals. In 2009 Dr. Kamermans came across some patients who asked if he would sign government marijuana forms and he signed off on a few.

Tyler Anderson / National Post   Dr. Rob Kamermans was arrested by police while working at the emergency ward of the hospital for having given out too many medical marijuana prescriptions.

He was convinced that opioids like OxyContin did a poor job of managing pain from cancer, severe arthritis, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy, people suffering and convinced that marijuana made their lives livable, as they looked for some relief from their pain. As far as Dr. Kamermans was concerned medical marijuana enabled his patients to stop using OxyContin, Percocet and other narcotic painkillers that while legal prescription drugs, kill hundreds across the country annually, with far greater numbers addicted.

He has the affirmation of a 2000 Ontario Court of Appeal decision that concluded no evidence has ever existed of any user ever suffering a fatal pot overdose. "I felt 'I'm doing the right thing'. I was just surprised that no other doctors would do it", he said. "I never really clued in to the money part, because I was so busy." Never a pot smoker himself, he began to respond affirmatively to the increasing number of patients who, through word-of-mouth heard there was a doctor who would prescribe marijuana for their medical needs.

Eventually people all over the province as well as other provinces began a pilgrimage to his Coe Hill location to pay their respects to the marijuana-dispensing physician who had sympathy for their need. A local journalist who is a family friend described patients arriving in wheelchairs, even ambulances. "I was just as shocked as anybody", Dr. Kamermans related.

Most of the patients, he said, were between 45 to 65 years of age, and all in legitimate pain. Eventually he took his services further afield, seeing up to 80 patients a day in Halifax, charging $100 for signing forms in Coe Hill, but $250 when he travelled, taking into account the additional costs being wracked up in the effort; a not unusual charge for physicians to make for consultation and form-filling, not charged to medicare.

Soon the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons informed him they were launching an investigation into his marijuana consultations. He stopped signing the forms. Not long afterward OPP officers came to his Coe Hill clinic, handcuffed him and took him off for interrogation. They went through his patient files, laying no charges, but hauling away over four thousand medical charts, not returning them for months.

Months later he was finally arrested on charges including six counts of forgery for allegedly bogus marijuana forms, three counts of fraud for allegedly billing Ontario's medicare agency for "services not rendered", one of possession of the proceeds of crime and one of money laundering. Police took possession of $60,000 in cash, and later revoked bail when he attempted the transfer of money to New Mexico for mortgage payments on a family property there.

Dr. Kamermans felt he responded to peoples' dire needs in aiding them with medical marijuana forms entitling them to qualify for medical marijuana. Something the greater preponderance of practising physicians, unwilling to complicate their already stressed practices, are reluctant to become involved with, uncertain of the outcomes. What he has experienced as a result seems to him to be clearly harassment.

His arrest endangered Sturgeon Falls residents, leaving their emergency department without a doctor. And now, Dr. Kamermans may no longer perform emergency-department work at the local hospitals that provided most of his income. As a result of loss of income he will have to sell his Coe Hill clinic. The college has laid several disciplinary charges in relation to the marijuana work.

"Mary is seething with anger most of the time", Dr. Kamermans said in an interview. "It's just horrible. They feel they can trash your life."