OTTAWA MAY LICENSE POT GROWERS

Ottawa - The federal government may soon start licensing angels of
mercy to supply the desperately ill with marijuana. Ottawa will
unveil proposed new regulations this week making it legal for third
parties to grow and supply marijuana for those who need it to relieve
the agony of terminal illness and other serious conditions.

The new rules will allow people who require the drug to alleviate
suffering to designate a grower on their behalf, sources told The
Globe and Mail Monday. The rules will also set out three categories
of people who will be allowed to seek exemptions from prosecution for
using marijuana. Government officials would only identify one
category - the terminally ill.

Officials familiar with the proposal say Ottawa would grant licences
to people for possessing and for growing or supplying marijuana. The
move comes four months before a court-imposed deadline forcing the
federal government to act on the issue.

"The licences to produce would be either for the individual who has
asked for the exemption, or they can designate someone," said the
source, who asked not to be identified.

An advocate for people who require the drug to relieve symptoms was
overjoyed at the news.

"I think it's terrific. It's a big move forward," said Philippe
Lucas, director of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, a
Victoria-based organization which advocates the use of marijuana for
medicinal purposes. "It's a realization that a lot of sick people
will not have the health or the knowledge to grow it themselves -
that they need a third party to do it."

The regulations will be unveiled by the end of the week and the
general public will be given 30 days to respond. New regulations
must be in place by the end of July, and come after the Ontario Court
of Appeal ruled that the country's laws forbidding the possession of
marijuana are unconstitutional and gave the federal government one
year to amend them.

The decision resulted from the case of Terrance Parker, a 44-year-old
epileptic who won a 23-year court battle for the right to smoke and
grow marijuana to control his seizures.

Mr. Parker's hydroponic garden was raided by police in 1997. The new
regulations would allow people like Mr. Parker to grow their own or
designate someone else to do it for them.

"We're trying to correct the contradiction that on the one hand
allows someone to take it for medical reasons and on the other makes
it illegal to actually produce it, buy it or grow it," the source
said.

The other key feature of the new rules clarifies just who can and
can't apply for exemptions.

Currently, people who believe their suffering can be eased by
medicinal marijuana can apply for an exemption from prosecution for
growing or using it.

However, lawyers for medicinal marijuana users say applications for
exemptions go into a "black hole" at Health Canada and that
relatively few people receive approval. The federal government has
supplied exemptions for 210 people.

Ontario alone has about 150,000 individuals who might benefit from
marijuana's ability to ease the symptoms of AIDS, cancer, epilepsy
and other conditions.

"This is designed to make it more transparent and more regular for
people," the source said. "You have to create the infrastructure to
support what had originally been seen just as a few exemptions."

The government is also working on setting up clinical trials to get a
more scientific understanding of which conditions might be best
alleviated by the drug.

The federal government has recently agreed to tender a contract to a
Saskatoon-based company to produce marijuana for medical purposes,
but the first delivery of the drug will not take place for about a
year and Health Canada officials needed to develop a strategy to make
it available in other ways.

With a report from Susan Bourette