A NICKEL-AND-DIME CASE

Marc-Boris St-Maurice doesn't look like an arch-criminal.

Stylishly attired in a charcoal-gray suit, black shirt and a red tie,
clean-shaven, his hair neatly trimmed. St-Maurice, who's 32, is not your
stereotypical dealer of marijuana in gram quantities. As we stood shivering
on St. Laurent Blvd. yesterday, no one approached St-Maurice to make a buy.

That also could be because we were on the steps of the Palais de Justice.
St-Maurice had ducked out for a cigarette just before he, 22-year-old
co-defendant Alexandre Neron, 10 supporters wearing green-ribbon arm bands
and a moving scrum of journalists and camera crews mounted the escalator up
to the fifth-floor courtroom where an unusual drug trial was about to begin.

St-Maurice was dressed for the supper-hour news because he's media-savvy. A
former musician (he was in a punk band called Grim Skunk) who still
produces records, he is an articulate proponent of marijuana legalization.

He founded the Bloc Pot in 1997 and took his political group national as
the Marijuana Party a week before the Club Compassion bust.

St-Maurice gives good sound bites, in both official languages, and thinks
on his feet. After being interviewed by Herb Luft of Pulse, St-Maurice
said: "We really like your first name."

Bada-boom. Too bad Der Spiegel didn't assign Gunter Grass.

Luft and his TV news confreres were deprived of the Palais de Woodstock
visuals they wanted. The marijuana case attracted no aging hippies in hemp
pants, no dreadlocked Deadheads, no one wearing roach-clip earrings or
puffing a defiant doobie.

It was all quite dignified - as farces go.

St-Maurice and Neron were arrested a year ago during an undercover police
operation that shut down Club Compassion. As its name suggests, the club,
on Rachel St., dispenses help to needy Montrealers.

It sells them marijuana.

Club Compassion, which reopened last April, has 55 clients with medical
conditions that can be treated by cannabis. They register with the club by
presenting either a doctor's prescription or, ideally, a Section 56
exemption from Health Canada, which permits cultivation and consumption of
marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Club Compassion sells only primo stuff. "We're very careful," said the
club's Caroline Doyer, "because impurities can cause adverse side-effects
among people who are sick already. We have quality controls."

Doyer says Club Compassion sells top-grade marijuana for $8 a gram. Street
prices - for impure marijuana that's been "stepped on" to boost profits -
run to $10 or $12 a gram.

In addition to scoring quality goods at reasonable prices, medicinal users
seem to fly under police radar. People buying marijuana at Club Compassion
were not swept up in last year's raid. The cops probably recognized that
the spectacle of AIDS patients and cancer sufferers being herded into a
police van would not burnish the image of the department.

St-Maurice and Neron were arrested because of their role in dispensing
marijuana at Club Compassion. If convicted, they are liable to prison
sentences of up to five years less a day.

The people wearing green armbands at the courthouse yesterday called the
adornments "bows of hope." Their hope is that common sense will prevail in
a case that seems to make everyone a bit queasy - not least patients who
used marijuana to combat nausea, some of whom were on hand to lend moral
support to guys whose crime was trying to ease people's pain.

During a break in the trial, Johnny Dupuis talked about his marijuana use.
Dupuis, who's 43, was the victim of multiple stabbings 23 years ago. The
knifing left him with a broad scar across his throat, and severe trauma.

He has trouble sleeping because, Dupuis explained, he was fast asleep when
his attacker struck. He also has problems with his digestion.

Dupuis smokes marijuana and uses it to brew tea. It helps him eat and sleep.

"The government shouldn't be bothering St-Maurice and Neron," Dupuis said
outside the courtroom. "They should be free to walk out of here. That's it,
that's all."

Should he beat the charges, St-Maurice will walk unchastened.

"The time and money I've put into my defence," he said, "would have been
better spent alleviating the suffering of others."

Free the Compassionate Two!