SICK ARE NO LONGER CRIMINALS

There will be a few quiet celebrations in some London homes this week.

Celebrations because the Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled medicinal
marijuana is legal for use by sick people who are helped by it.

Quiet because the people most likely to benefit from this ruling are ill
and simply don't have the energy for much more than a few hoorays.

London's Lynn Harichy figures she'll muster a cheer or two despite the
dreadful fatigue her multiple sclerosis causes. The London grandmother has
been a strong crusader for the change, fighting with every weapon she could
from letter-writing to trying to light up a joint on the steps of the
London police station.

Her court case didn't proceed as the landmark she'd hoped for, and as her
energy faded, she turned her attention to getting a Health Canada exemption
that would let her use marijuana to control her debilitating symptoms.
She's been waiting for a year.

Harichy used to run the Cannabis Compassion Club, a centre that supplied
medicinal marijuana to sick people. Yesterday, when she heard about the
ruling, she was thinking of her more than 600 customers, sufferers of MS,
AIDS, cancer, epilepsy, chronic pain. Many of them were too weak even to
take proper care of themselves let alone go out and buy marijuana from
scary people.

"We always delivered because the people who bought from us just couldn't go
out on the street," said Harichy who ran the club with her husband. "It
would have been too dangerous for them."

Not all of them will live to see the change, but still, Harichy said, this
light at the end of the tunnel will lift the community's spirits.

She thought of her mother who died a painful death from breast cancer in
1991, begging for marijuana to ease the pain in the final stages. But
Harichy didn't know about medicinal marijuana then. And she feared her
mother would go to jail and have no health care at all.

This ruling means within a year, sick people won't have to break the law to
buy the medication that makes their lives tolerable.

Yesterday, Ontario's top court recognized the need to stop making criminals
of sick people.

It released a ruling that said Canada's marijuana laws are unconstitutional
because they make sick people choose between their health and the risk of
imprisonment.

And just to make sure the federal government doesn't let things slide on a
topic it's been loath to touch, the court gave it 12 months to create a law
legalizing medicinal marijuana. The court tossed out all of Canada's
marijuana laws, so without a new law at the end of the year, there'll be no
prohibition on marijuana.

And to underline the fact that it's not the court's intention to have no
controls, yesterday it also released its unanimous ruling upholding former
Londoner Chris Clay's possession and trafficking convictions.

Clay had sought to legalize recreational marijuana, claiming pot has no
harmful side-effects and that criminalization of the drug poses a greater
danger to the public.

The court's ruling overturning the marijuana laws was based on the case of
Terry Parker, whose 40-year history of severe epilepsy made his life a
nightmare until he discovered marijuana could control the 15 to 80 seizures
he had a week.

The court heard details of Parker's life with uncontrolled epilepsy that
would make you cringe. His seizures often left him "unconscious, violently
twitching and writhing on the ground."

Surgery and traditional medication didn't help. Parker also battled
depression and suicidal feelings.

Listen closely and perhaps you can hear the hundreds of Londoners who will
benefit from that, offering up quiet cheers and prayers of thanks.