Article content continued

Despite telling patients not to spread the word, demand for his signature grew so great that he would find as many as 30 patients at a time lined up at his homey practice in the Ontario hamlet of Coe Hill, a community of a few hundred people, 90 minutes northeast of Peterborough, Ont. He eventually ran pot clinics from hotel rooms in Montreal, Halifax and Miramichi, N.B.

He changed the landscape of medical marijuana in Canada

“He changed the landscape of medical marijuana in Canada,” said Adam Greenblatt of the Medical Cannabis Access Society, a dispensary in Montreal. “[But] it just got out of control for him. It hit a point where everybody knew about him … He was just inundated with patients.”

To those who had been turned away by other physicians, Dr. Kamermans was a “God, an angel from heaven,” said Mr. Greenblatt. To the police, he is an alleged fraudster who endorsed patients ineligible for the controversial treatment — while charging them a tidy $100 to $250 each for the service.

Officers laid the same charges against his wife, Mary, the clinic’s nurse, even though the Health Canada marijuana forms can only be signed by a doctor. In Halifax, the RCMP charged him with two counts of attempted trafficking.

Sgt. Kristine Rae, an OPP spokeswoman, said she could not comment on details of the alleged offences.

Dr. Kamermans admits freely that he earned between $650,000 and $700,000 — netting about $500,000 after expenses — from signing the marijuana forms. But he says he did it because of a deep-seated belief that the drug was a safe and effective treatment.