NOT ABOVE THE LAW

A marijuana grow-op in Smiths Falls has done all Canadians a favour by
focusing a bright light on the federal government's flagrant violation of
the rule of law in its handling of medical marijuana.

Last week, police raided Carasel Harvest Supply Corp., which operates in an
old Canadian Tire building, after they learned (through media reports) that
the company had started growing marijuana even though Health Canada hadn't
given the company a licence yet.

Health Canada's refusal to give a licence to Carasel is now being
challenged in the courts as an "unconstitutional barrier" to medicinal
marijuana users. Right now, the health ministry will let an eligible sick
person grow marijuana, and it will let that person designate someone else
to grow marijuana on his or her behalf, but it won't let more than one user
designate the same other person to do the growing. That means the only
legal multiple-client grower is the government's single source in Flin
Flon, whose product many users dismiss as ditchweed.

This policy is more than addled: it's unconstitutional. Last fall, the
Ontario Court of Appeal struck down three Health Canada rules on
marijuana-growing, including the no-multiple-customers one, on the grounds
that they effectively forced many users to buy their medicine from drug
dealers -- what the government called "unlicensed suppliers."

The rules, the court's three judges wrote, "create an alliance between the
Government and the black market whereby the Government authorizes
possession of marijuana for medical purposes and the black market supplies
the necessary product."

Health Canada dropped two rules so users could now pay growers and the
lowering the medical standards for some of them, but it decided to ignore
the court's decision that said a grower should be able to supply more than
one user. Spokeswoman Aggie Adamczyk says the regulators consider the
court's order "useful guidance" and believe they're living up to the
principles laid out by the judges.

It's hard to see how Health Canada can say that, as the court's decision
was clear: Health Canada either had to scrap its whole regulation system
and try again, or keep the existing system minus the three rules that were
unconstitutional and "of no force and effect." The department decided to
ignore the court, Ms. Adamczyk says, because growers working for more than
one user might find ways to sell extra marijuana on the side, thus
supplying the black market.

Health Canada doesn't get to follow the court orders it agrees with and
skip the ones it doesn't: if you tried it, you'd go to jail. Besides, such
doublethink disregards the whole basis of the judges' orders: that the old
rules forced legal users to buy their medicine from drug dealers.

The volume of the supply aside, a single grower with a profit motive is
easier to keep an eye on, and has a stronger incentive to comply with the
rules, than a horde of amateurs with separate production costs to pay.

Canadians shouldn't have to wait for Carasel's case to wend its way through
the court system before the federal government comes up with a marijuana
policy that's both constitutional and coherent.