ALLIANCE RIDING PREZ GOES OVER TO POT PARTY

An Alliance Party riding association president is running as a candidate
for the B.C. Marijuana Party in the upcoming provincial election.

Leonard Melman says he told his riding executive in Nanaimo on Thursday
about his intentions to run as a B.C. Marijuana Party Candidate. His
term as president expires on April 21 and he hasn't decided yet if he'll
keep his membership in the Alliance Party although he believes he can
"theoretically" remain a member of the federal party and take part in
provincial politics.

Mr. Melman says Alliance party officials may yet call him "a flaming
traitor and want to have (his membership) revoked" but he is not
"defecting" from the federal party. "I'm not saying to hell with the
Canadian Alliance," he says, but the Marijuana Party's platform is
closer to his Liberal beliefs.

"I am an idealist by nature," he says, and "deeply committed" to the
cause of individual liberty. "I would be less than candid if I didn't
say some of the (Alliance) party's PR problems are getting disturbing,"
he adds.

The Alliance has "deviated" from a philosophy of less government and
more protection for individual rights that first attracted him to the
federal party, he says. "It's not that I'm resigning from the Alliance,"
he says, but the B.C. Marijuana Party's platform is now "much more to
what I believe in."

Alliance MP Jim Lunny in the Nanaimo-Alberni riding could not be reached
for comment yesterday. Local and national Alliance Party officials were
also unavailable for comment.

Norm Siefken, B.C. Marijuana Party candidate in Chilliwack-Sumas, says
he believes Mr. Melman's candidacy will "show the public our platform is
not just for people on the extreme left" and that there is room for
"conservatives" in the party.

"He certainly brings a new level of credibility to us," says Marijuana
Party leader Brian Taylor. But he says there are already party
candidates running in this provincial election who support the Canadian
Alliance federally.

"I don't think we're the bogey-man for the Alliance Party at all," he
says, and both parties hold similar stands on issues like gun control
and private schools that focus on individual rights.

Mr. Melman says not only does he not smoke pot, but he doesn't drink
alcohol or smoke cigarettes either: "I have no use for marijuana in my
personal life, but that doesn't give me the right to tell somebody else
they can't."

Although Mr. Taylor earlier claimed the party could form the next
opposition given the NDP's poor re-election chances, now he's saying it
might form a "moral opposition" but won't likely win a single seat.