SHUT OUT WHEN SMOKE CLEARS

Organizing a bunch of potheads can be challenging work at any given
time, but try organizing 70 pot-party candidates across Canada during
a federal election. "I'm exhausted," said Marc-Boris St-Maurice,
president of the Marijuana Party of Canada. "We survived another one
and I'm relieved that I will be able to get some rest. I felt like I
was giving a kidney. It's been non-stop seven days a week, on call
24-7."

St-Maurice had no illusions last night about his party's chances of
winning its first seat. "Not by a long shot, but that's because of the
way our election system works with the first-past-the-post principle."
The pot-party policy calls for legalization of cannabis and
proportional representation in the House of Commons. In the last
election, one out of every two hundred voters picked the Marijuana
Party. "With the results we got last time we'd have had enough for
about 1.5 seats," he said. The strongest support comes from Quebec,
where the party picked up about 3 per cent of the vote in 2000. This
election, the province fielded almost half the party's candidates -
31. Asked whether he was planning a pot party after the results came
in, St-Maurice sternly said, "Marijuana use is a personal issue."