FUGITIVE FROM U.S. FEARS HARSH JUSTICE OVER 'MEDICAL MARIJUANA' CHARGE

Renee Boje, Now A Roberts Creek Resident, Hopes That Canada's Justice
Minister Will Reject Extradition Request.

OTTAWA - With her peasant skirts, willowy looks and gentle voice, Renee Boje
appears to be just the sort of flower child one would expect to meet at
Roberts Creek on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast.

But not everyone agrees. U.S. drug enforcement officials insist Boje, 30, is
a serious criminal on the run from justice, a woman guilty of such a
terrible crime that she must be punished as harshly as rapists and
murderers.

What is her crime? She is charged with growing and conspiring to sell
marijuana. If she is found guilty, the mandatory minimum sentence she will
receive is 10 years in prison.

Flower child or felon? Federal Justice Minister Anne McLellan will make a
key decision about that question after Sunday, the deadline for submissions
in what is becoming a politically charged extradition case.

U.S. authorities have asked Canada to turn over Ms. Boje, an American
citizen, so she can stand trial in California. The charges she face stem
from a July 1997 raid on the Bel Air mansion of a cancer survivor who
advocates marijuana's medical benefits. The legal and public battles that
have followed the raid highlight sensitive questions in U.S. politics,
including how to deal with the medical use of marijuana; the excesses of the
war on drugs and the dangers of the exploding prison population

Now, with Ms. Boje fighting to stay in her Canadian refuge, the Bel Air raid
forces Canadians to confront a question: Just how brutal does another
country's criminal justice system have to be before Canada refuses to hand
someone over to that system?

Strange as it may sound, this swirling controversy has the most modest of
sources: the AIDS virus that infected the body of an American author named
Peter McWilliams.

In 1996, McWilliams -- who had sold more than two million copies of his
self-help books, including Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, an attack on
the criminalization of consensual activities -- was told by his doctor that
his HIV had become AIDS, and with it had come cancer. Chemotherapy and
radiation followed, leaving him racked with nausea so powerful he couldn't
continue his treatments.

Mr. McWilliams tried every anti-nausea medication available, without
success. With his doctor's consent, he turned to marijuana. The nausea
vanished, allowing his treatment to go on. A medical marijuana crusader was
born.

McWilliams met a second man, Todd McCormick, who, at 26, had spent most of
his life battling cancer, also with the aid of marijuana, and had become a
leading expert in the medical uses of the plant. Mr. McWilliams
commissioned Mr. McCormick to experiment with the plant and write two books
on growing and using medical marijuana.

With the hefty advance he was given, McCormick rented a stucco mansion in
Bel Air and gathered assistants and activists to help with his project.
Boje, a university-educated freelance artist, was hired to illustrate the
texts.

It was an exciting time for medical marijuana advocates. In 1996,
California's voters had approved Proposition 215, the Compassionate Care
Act, which made it legal under state law for seriously ill people to
purchase and use marijuana if recommended by a doctor. "Compassion clubs"
sprang up to buy marijuana from growers on behalf of patients. Several
other states prepared to follow California's example.

In Bel Air, the Cannabis Castle, as the rented mansion was dubbed, became a
well-known symbol of the thaw. McCormick and McWilliams talked openly about
their work and made little effort to disguise their extensive experiments
breeding various marijuana strains. Potted marijuana plants grew on
balconies and in neat rows in the back yard.

The U.S. federal government, however, was dismayed. Federal officials
denounced the idea of medical marijuana as a stalking horse for the
legalization of the recreational use of the drug. Federal officials insisted
that the letter of federal law would be enforced. The California referendum
had legalized medical marijuana under state law only; it remained strictly
illegal under federal law. The federal government therefore warned
California doctors that if they recommended medical marijuana to patients,
they would be aiding and abetting a federal crime and could be prosecuted.
Federal law enforcement officials continued to aggressively prosecute
federal legislation banning marijuana without regard for the new state
laws.

The result was a July 1997 raid on McCormick's Cannabis Castle. Some 4,000
plants were seized and numerous charges, including trafficking, were laid
against McCormick and McWilliams. Authorities produced no substantial
evidence that McCormick was selling his marijuana. They simply took the
number of plants as proof of intent to traffic, dismissing the argument that
the two men had more plants than they needed for personal use because they
were conducting breeding experiments.

Boje, who never owned any of the plants, also had production and trafficking
charges laid against her, mainly on the grounds that she had allegedly been
seen watering McCormick's plants and moving them around to get better
sunlight. Those charges were dropped. But fearing that they would be
reinstated, she fled to British Columbia on a lawyer's advice.

The charges were indeed laid again and Boje, now an international fugitive,
applied to the Canadian government for refugee status. She cited several
grounds, including the gross disproportion of the sentence she faces if
convicted, and what she claims is a politically motivated prosecution whose
real target is California's medical marijuana law. She also points to the
inhumane conditions in many prisons in the U.S., where soaring drug
convictions in particular have led to severe overcrowding and dangerous
conditions. This is a particularly concern for female prisoners who,
according to human rights reports, are often subject to rape and torture at
the hands of fellow prisoners and prison authorities.

American officials responded to Boje's flight with a demand that Canada
extradite the Californian.

Boje has lost rounds in court, and now both her refugee claim and the
extradition request are bound for the desk of federal Justice Minister
McLellan.

As difficult as Boje's predicament may be, McCormick and McWilliams suffered
worse fates. An American federal judge refused to allow the two men to
present evidence at trial that marijuana was for them a medical necessity.
He further ruled that they couldn't mention Proposition 215, or argue that
at the time of the alleged federal offence it was legal to do what they did
under California law. McWilliams was even forbidden from telling the jury
that he had AIDS and cancer.

Barred from raising any defence, the two men had no options left. McCormick
pleaded guilty in exchange for having some charges dropped, and was
sentenced to five years in a federal prison named Terminal Island.

Underweight and suffering from severe scoliosis and nerve damage, he asked
prison authorities if he could be prescribed the synthetic drug Marinol,
which contains one of the active ingredients in marijuana. The officials
refused. Instead, they tested McCormick for marijuana use and got a
positive result. McCormick insisted the result came from use prior to his
being imprisoned -- trace elements can linger in human cells for up to a
month and he wasn't tested prior to being jailed -- to no avail. Prison
officials punished him with two months in Terminal Island's solitary
confinement unit, where he can currently be found.

McWilliams also agreed to plead guilty. Released on bail pending
sentencing, he was required to submit to drug testing every week. With the
bail secured by his mother's house, he didn't dare touch the marijuana he
needed to keep from throwing up his AIDS medicine. In June, McWilliams was
found dead in his bathroom. He had choked on his own vomit.

Boje fears a similar fate is being prepared for McCormick. He was
underweight before he went to prison and that will only get worse in
solitary confinement, Boje worries. He's had no medication or physiotherapy
since he was jailed. "I feel that they're trying to do the same thing to
Todd. They're ultimately trying to kill him."

As fearful as Boje is for McCormick, she is serene about her own fate. "I
really trust that the universe will take care of me."

Boje's universe, however, has narrowed down to the person of McLellan. The
federal justice minister can reject the American extradition request on
several grounds, the strongest of which is likely that to send Boje back to
the United States would be "unjust and oppressive."

John Conroy, Boje's lawyer, argues that it's a question of proportion. In
Canada, he says, Boje would likely receive a fine and, perhaps, a criminal
record if convicted on similar charges. And that's if charges were even
laid. Conroy points out that in many cities in Canada, there are growing
clubs that provide marijuana to patients recommended by doctors. These
clubs are well-known to the police but, provided they operate within certain
limits, they are left alone. One such club in Vancouver has more than 1,300
members, Conroy says.

And that's something that Canadians support and want expanded. "The public
in Canada shows something in excess of 85-per-cent support for medical
marijuana," Conroy notes.

The federal government, after years of refusing to deal with the matter, has
begun to study the medical uses of marijuana and grant exemptions to bona
fide patients.

The Ontario Court of Appeal has further directed the government to expand
and formalize the system for granting exemptions, or have the entire law
restricting marijuana struck down.

Given this environment, Conroy says, "it seems to me to be outrageous, and
the public should be outraged, that the American federal government wants to
take this young woman and stick her in a prison for a minimum of 10 years."