OTTAWA CAN'T BAN GOOD MEDICINE

In an inconspicuous Toronto storefront shoehorned into a row of grubby
take-out restaurants, a group of activists, AIDS victims and chemo cases
are methodically sapping Ottawa's will to enforce its idiotic marijuana
laws. It's one thing to put people in jail for smoking a substance less
dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. It's another to imprison them for buying
medicine.

About half of Canadians support legalizing marijuana. But that option is
too radical for the feds' taste. So last month, Justice Minister Martin
Cauchon floated a halfway-house measure known as "decriminalization": Get
caught with pot for personal consumption and you'd merely pay a fine. But
Cauchon is way behind the curve. The real movers are people like Neev
(first names only, for obvious reasons), founder of Toronto's Cannabis As
Living Medicine, known to its members as CALM.

The idea of "medicinal marijuana" was once seen as a scam made up by
potheads. But that's changed in recent years, as blue-ribbon studies have
found that marijuana provides effective relief from a range of serious
conditions -- especially the severe nausea and appetite loss associated
with chemotherapy and AIDS wasting syndrome. A watershed came three years
ago, when Richard Brookhiser, Senior Editor of the ultra-conservative
National Review, wrote in The New York Times that he used pot to battle
testicular cancer.

At CALM, you can meet people suffering from every ailment under the sun.
Last Sunday, I talked with Dan, who has Crohn's disease in his duodenum.
After he eats, a wave of acid sometimes washes over the damaged organ, and
the pain is intense. Marijuana, the mild-mannered 20-something tells me,
has been his miracle drug. With a joint at the ready, he can even brave the
odd slice of pizza.

Then there's Kathy, who came all the way from her home in Kitchener, Ont.,
to buy a few grams of "California Orange." Several years ago, Kathy had her
large bowel removed. To get through the agony that accompanies digestion,
she started pumping about 10 vials of doctor-prescribed morphine into her
veins every day. But when she's got good weed, she can get by on a fifth of
that. "It's changed my life," she told me. "I can wake up, smoke half a
joint, have some toast and start the day without my head in the toilet."

Like several hundred other sick Canadians, Kathy's been awarded the legal
right to smoke marijuana by federal health officials. But she's caught in a
Catch-22: There is still no legal pot source in Canada -- which means,
despite her right to possess and consume, she still breaks the law every
time she buys it. So does CALM by selling it to her.

Which brings us to a key question. CALM's location isn't exactly a closely
guarded secret. Whatever the future holds, marijuana is still illegal, and
there's a lot of it on the club's premises. Why don't the police raid CALM,
seize the stash, and shut the place down?

When I put the question to Neev, he grins. "OK. What happens after we're
arrested?" he asks. "Then you've got this very public trial and a few very
sick members of CALM [on the stand] talking about how effective medicinal
marijuana is. When this kind of educational process goes before a judge" --
he cites recent examples from Alberta and British Columbia -- "they almost
always rule in our favour and criticize the prosecution for bugging
medicinal users. Why would a [Crown attorney] want to go through that? Why
would the cops?"

Despite the mounting evidence from researchers, many conservatives still
react hysterically to any suggestion that marijuana has medicinal value.
They see prescription pot as the thin edge of the wedge: Once we let cancer
and glaucoma patients smoke it, the theory goes, the stuff will be halfway
legitimate, and the government won't be able to say no to anyone.

They're right -- thank God. It's impossible to meet people like Kathy and
Dan, and still beat your chest about the dangers of pot. It's not just the
sight of sick people getting good medicine you observe at CALM; it's the
total absence of any of the pathologies we're taught to associate with drug
use. Marijuana isn't addictive like nicotine or cocaine -- which means
people rarely steal for it. It doesn't make you start fights or drive 90
MPH, like alcohol. And it doesn't kill you or turn you into a street
hooker, like the heroin junkies who patrol my Cabbagetown neighbourhood.

In other words, it doesn't matter what the police do. They can close CALM
down and create a new class of pot martyrs, or they can stand back and let
Canada see the normal, non-threatening face of marijuana. Either way, it's
only a matter of time before Canada's dumbest law is history. And when that
happy day comes, Neev and his crew will deserve much of the credit.