REBEL WITH A COMPELLING CAUSE

Jim Wakeford Fights To Make Marijuana Freely Available To The Sick And Dying

ONE OF THE WORST MOMENTS IN Jim Wakeford's life came last March as he rode
in a taxi through rural Ontario, smoking marijuana and chatting with the
driver.

Suddenly, an Ontario Provincial Police cruiser appeared alongside.

Ordering the taxi to pull over, officers arrested Wakeford and seized a
pound of marijuana he planned to share with friends in Toronto who, like
him, use the drug for medical purposes. Eleven days earlier, local cops had
raided a rented farmhouse in Udora, 75 km northeast of Toronto, and seized
about 200 marijuana plants Wakeford was growing there.

Now, the 56-year-old AIDS patient was taken to a station to be
photographed, fingerprinted and charged with drug offences, including
possession for the purpose of trafficking. "I was freaking out," recalls
Wakeford. "I was just terrified." But Wakeford noticed that the cops were
uneasy, too. "I think they were humiliated," he says, "to be busting
someone who has a legal exemption to use marijuana."

The episode underscored the catch-22 contradictions embedded in federal
policy since Ottawa began granting exemptions for the medical use of
marijuana -- regulations that permit sick people to smoke pot, but force
many of them to obtain the drug illegally.

Emaciated by AIDS, but doggedly energetic, Wakeford has emerged as a highly
visible warrior in the battle to make the drug available without a web of
bureaucratic restrictions. New regulations that took effect this week --
making Canada the first nation to establish a regulatory framework for the
medical use of marijuana -- appeared partly designed to meet his demands.

But Wakeford says the new rules "don't change anything -- they will make it
even harder for sick people to get marijuana."

A veteran social activist and a prominent member of Toronto's gay
community, Wakeford first went to court in February, 1998, seeking a
constitutional exemption to use marijuana for medical reasons.

He won his case, forcing Ottawa, in June, 1999, to grant him one of the
first legal exemptions. Since then, federal officials have issued
exemptions to about 300 Canadians suffering from AIDS, epilepsy, multiple
sclerosis and other diseases.

But Wakeford's exemption hasn't made his life any easier.

Because he's tried to grow or buy marijuana for those who couldn't
otherwise get it, he has been plagued by a series of busts.

So far this year, he's been arrested three times for growing and possessing
more than the seven plants and 30 g of smokable marijuana the previous
federal rules allowed. "They want to make an example of Jim," says his
lawyer, Alan Young, a longtime opponent of federal marijuana laws. "But
they picked the wrong guy, because Jim is a fighter."

The roots of Wakeford's defiance go back to growing up gay in Chaplin,
Sask., midway between Moose Jaw and Swift Current. "I never felt I
belonged," he remembers. "I was called every name you could think of." That
didn't stop him from springing to the defence of other bullied children.
"I've always believed," he says, "that strong people should help those who
are weaker."

Moving to Toronto when he was 19, Wakeford in 1967 founded and for 20 years
ran Oolagen Community Services, a Toronto treatment centre for troubled
young people.

And in 1992, he played a central role in establishing a fund-raising
foundation for Casey House, a Toronto hospice for AIDS patients. By 1993,
Wakeford was fighting full-blown AIDS himself, suffering nausea and loss of
appetite.

He says he'd smoked marijuana 25 years earlier, but rarely after that. As
an AIDS sufferer, he says, "I was amazed to discover that the drug I'd once
had so much fun with is terrifically effective as a medicine."

In his continuing war with federal authorities, Wakeford is now asking the
Ontario Court of Appeal to order Ottawa to supply him with marijuana, or
protect his suppliers from the police.

Under the new regulations, doctors will be allowed to recommend varying
amounts of pot according to patients' needs, and federally licensed growers
will be permitted to supply one patient each with medical marijuana.

Wakeford argues that Ottawa's new regulations won't work. "Most doctors
don't know anything about marijuana," he says, "and they won't prescribe it."

Meanwhile, the busts and court battles have taxed Wakeford's dwindling
physical and financial resources. Because he never expected to survive AIDS
as long as he has, the payout from an insurance policy he cashed in six
years ago is running out. "I'm beaten and just about destitute," says
Wakeford. "But," he adds of his crusade to make marijuana freely available
to the sick and dying, "I won't give up."

Next Article is posted at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1389/a01.html