A Saskatoon woman who is fighting to have the Government of Saskatchewan subsidize her medicinal cannabis says she hopes to take her battle to the province’s highest court.

Alicia Yashcheshen, who consumes medicinal cannabis to treat her Crohn’s disease and chronic pain, receives social assistance through the Saskatchewan Ministry of Social Services. In 2018, she applied for special food status coverage to cover her medicinal cannabis. According to court documents, the ministry rejected the application, saying that cannabis is a drug, not a food item.

Yashcheshen also made an exception drug status request in 2018 to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health for coverage of her cannabis oil. Court documents show she applied on grounds including that she is “extremely allergic to pharmaceutical drugs” and she has been addicted to opioids in the past. That request was also denied, with the ministry saying medicinal marijuana isn’t covered by the Saskatchewan Drug Plan (the formulary) and doesn’t qualify for exception drug status since it is not an approved therapeutic product and has not been assessed by Health Canada for safety, efficacy and quality as required by federal regulations.

Yashcheshen took both ministries to court last year, seeking coverage backdated to March 2011, totalling $63,000.

In a written decision released this month, a Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench justice upheld the decisions by the ministries not to subsidize the drug.

Justice Heather MacMillan-Brown wrote that she would not intervene in the ministries’ decisions.

“When viewed through the lens of deference, the decisions made by both MSS and the Ministry of Health to deny Ms. Yashcheshen coverage for cannabis lie entirely within the realm of reasonableness and are insulated from her challenge,” MacMillan-Brown wrote.

MacMillan-Brown wrote that allowing Yashcheshen’s challenge to the Ministry of Health decision would “open the floodgate” and remove its “necessary discretion” to add or remove drugs from the formulary and to to determine if a person or drug qualifies for exception drug status.

The provincial government said in an emailed statement that it believes her decision is appropriate “given the circumstances of the case,” but because the case is still within the period for an appeal, it won’t be commenting further.

Yashcheshen sent her notice of appeal to the court registrar this week. She argues that MacMillan-Brown erred by making her findings “without accommodating the appellant’s medical disability according to her specific needs of her disability.”

The appeal also states that MacMillan-Brown “erred in her facts” by not finding, among other things, that Yashcheshen “requires cannabis oil and edibles as a life sustaining agent,” that she is underweight and cannot keep weight due to anorexia, and that she risks needing a feeding tube if she can’t use medicinal cannabis oil to maintain a healthy weight.

The appeal arguments have not yet been tested in court.

Yashcheshen told the StarPhoenix last week that her parents had borrowed against their farm to help her pay for medicinal cannabis.

“My parents aren’t rich and basically we’re going into debt every month just to pay for my medication,” she said.