JUDGE ORDERS POLICE TO RETURN WOMAN'S MEDICINAL MARIJUANA

KITCHENER, Ont. (CP) - A jubilant woman wheeled out of a courtroom Tuesday
clutching her precious package of marijuana and immediately lit up in front
of the courthouse. "I am ecstatic," Catherine Devries, 42, said after a
judge ordered police to return 21 grams of marijuana they seized April 22.

Devries is one of 37 Canadians legally entitled to use marijuana for
medical reasons.

Police seized marijuana sent to her by a British Columbia group that
supplies it free to exemptees after the package broke open at the Kitchener
postal plant.

Neither police nor the post office knew Devries had the medical exemption
because Health Canada has not yet passed along the names of exemptees to
police departments.

After they found out, police said they couldn't return the marijuana
because that would be trafficking.

So Devries and her lawyer took the matter to court and they got the order
in about 10 minutes.

A police officer wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans came into the
courtroom holding a brown inter-office envelope and handed it to Devries,
who was seated in her wheelchair at the front of the court.

Devries began to cry as Sgt. Jim Erstad passed her the drug she desperately
needs to control nausea and enable her to eat. She has a small bowel
disorder and suffers from a painful back condition caused by a degenerative
nerve disorder.

"Yes!" she shouted, twirling around in her wheelchair in the hallway.

"I'm going to go outside and do some medicine," Devries said as she pulled
three plastic packages of marijuana from the envelope.

"I can actually feel the lining of my intestine easing up. Am I getting my
colour back?" she asked reporters after lighting up.

Earlier, federal drug prosecutor Gerry Taylor told Justice Donald MacMillan
that Devries shouldn't have to worry that her drugs could be taken again.

Staff Sgt. Gary Askin, who leads the police drug unit, said police can't
make any promises because the post office initiated the seizure by calling
in police.

"If we run into another situation where they seize a package and turn it
over to us, we have to take it. We just can't say no, you keep it," he
said.

Drugs are illegal and are considered "non-mailable" material, Canada Post
spokesman Tom Dalby said. There is no policy in place to deal with this
"new wrinkle" of medical marijuana being mailed across the country to
exemptees, he said.