MAGIC BUS HALIFAX-BOUND

Organizers Of Canada's Only Marijuana Teahouse Are Rolling
East

The organizers of the country's only marijuana teahouse are coming
east, and plan to open a marijuana teahouse in Halifax before the end
of the year.

"We have completed fixing up our cannibus, and will soon head to
Toronto to open a teahouse there," Michael Maniotis said yesterday, on
the phone from Vancouver. The cannibus is a 1969 school bus
refurbished as a mobile office, information centre and teahouse.

After Toronto, the cannibus will roll on to Montreal to open a
teahouse. Then, it's our turn. "We will probably be in Halifax in
September," Maniotis said. "Coming to Halifax is symbolic of our
intention to be coast-to-coast."

Part of the aim of each teahouse is to educate people about their
rights within Health Canada's new law governing medicinal marijuana.
Maniotis points to category 3 of Health Canada's policy on medicinal
marijuana as something many Canadians could benefit from reading.

Category 3 states that free marijuana will be supplied to all
"applicants who suffer from symptoms associated with a medical
condition or its treatment ... and all conventional treatments have
failed or are otherwise medically inappropriate."

The Vancouver teahouse was opened with great fanfare two months ago.
It was billed as a place where people with medicinal marijuana status
certified by Health Canada — more than 700 people now have the photo
ID cards — could take the drug, listen to music, and socialize. They
could also meet people who would grow the drug for them, as authorized
under Health Canada regulations.

Vancouver police raided the teahouse on Thursday, shutting it down.
Police said two undercover police officers bought marijuana there
before the raid. Maniotis said the charges will be thrown out; he said
the raid stemmed from a landlord-tenant dispute, and the teahouse will
soon reopen in a larger location.

Vancouver has a more liberal culture than Halifax, but Maniotis says
he knows what he's in for coming here. "I left Canada at 21 and lived
in Greece for 13 years," he said. "There, you get two years in jail
for having one joint. So, I've been in more restrictive places ... as
well, we have quite a few people in Vancouver who are from Halifax
(and they are advising us)."

If a marijuana teahouse is set up in Halifax, will we accept it as a
positive change in our community? I will, for two reasons. First,
because it would be good therapy for medical marijuana users, many of
whom are terminally ill. And also because it will be one more step
along the seemingly endless path toward a sane marijuana policy in
this country.

The prohibition of marijuana is foolish, wasteful and doomed to be
repealed. In the past few years, even conservative commentators like
Ann Landers and The Economist magazine have come out for change.

The Canadian Medical Association favours decriminalization. It
concluded that the health effects of moderate marijuana use is "minimal."

The Canadian Association of Police Chiefs supports decriminalization,
too. The police know that policing marijuana is costing our criminal
justice system an estimated $150 million a year. Imagine that money
going to fight real crimes, or drugs that are actually dangerous and
unhealthy.

Michael Maniotis sums up the insanity of the current law with
irony.

"Health Canada tells us that (almost) 50,000 Canadians a year die from
tobacco-related diseases," he said. "Yet it is still being sold."