CANADA AND US IN DRUG DEBATE

A US Woman Seeks Political Asylum In Canada, Claiming Persecution In
Marijuana Case.

A US woman wanted in California for conspiring to sell marijuana is
fighting extradition from Canada on the grounds that she is a political
refugee - from the war on drugs.

Her belief in the medicinal value of marijuana makes her in effect a member
of a persecuted group, her lawyer argues.

This case is more than an unprecedented legal gambit. It also illustrates
the contradictory laws and enduring sensitivity of marijuana as a public
issue in the United States and Canada.

It's been nearly three years since Golden State voters approved a new law
allowing medicinal use of cannabis. But questions about how sick people are
to be supplied with their newly legal medicine remain to be resolved, and
US federal authorities remain adamant in their opposition to state laws
such as California's Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act.
Prosecutions for distribution of marijuana continue.

And so Renee Boje, arrested in 1997 in the Bel Air, Calif., home of Todd
McCormick, a high-profile advocate of medicinal marijuana, has been charged
with conspiracy to distribute the drug, an offense carrying a sentence of
10 years to life. She faces an extradition hearing Nov. 1 in Vancouver.

"She's caught in the cross-fire of the war on drugs," says Maury Mason, her
spokesman, in Roberts Creek, British Columbia.

Political Factor

A US official requesting anonymity calls the use of the term "political
asylum" by Ms. Boje's advocates "an artificial way of casting the
discussion," but acknowledges, "There's always a major political element in
a drug case."

But Boje's lawyer, John Conroy, of Abbotsford, British Columbia, insists,
"It's not a stretch to say that it's a political issue." The severity of
the sentence she faces if convicted indicates an "unjust and oppressive"
justice system, Mr. Conroy argues. He suggests that the charge she would
face if the case were playing out in Canada would be "aiding and abetting
cultivation" of the drug - with a maximum sentence of seven years.

Mr. Mason, a former media director for the environmental group Greenpeace,
says the campaign on Boje's behalf has two purposes, "One, to get her off,
and two, to send a message to the US: Take a look at your own drug policy."

But the Boje case is unfolding at a time when Canada is going through its
own struggle over the issue of medical marijuana. Currently, those wishing
to use the drug legally for medicinal purposes - to alleviate pain or
control side effects from other drugs - must apply to the federal health
minister in Ottawa. Getting permission has been widely deemed cumbersome
and bureaucratic, a process in which he has broad, if not complete,
discretion. This month 14 applications were approved - bringing the total
of legal marijuana smokers to 16 across Canada.

But at the same time, federal lawyers have been in court in Toronto,
seeking to overturn a provincial court's ruling allowing an individual
diagnosed as epileptic to smoke marijuana legally to control what are
described as life-threatening seizures. In 1997, an Ontario court gave
Terry Parker permission to smoke marijuana free of prosecution. But Ottawa
lawyers are arguing that this permission usurps federal authority; Mr.
Parker should make application to the health minister like the others.

On both sides of the border, legal supply of the drug is an issue.

"People didn't pass Proposition 215 with the thought of sick people having
to go downtown to a dark alley to buy their medicine," says Rand Martin,
chief of staff for California State Sen. John Vasconcellos. The senator has
introduced legislation to set up a registry of people with legal permission
for medicinal marijuana. If the system is implemented, a police officer
would be able to check on someone's marijuana status as easily as he could
check on outstanding parking tickets.

Yet people allowed to use medicinal marijuana are often too ill to grow
their own. And because marijuana is a plant and not a manufactured product
like aspirin, there's not an obvious role for pharmaceutical companies to
play, observes Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa lawyer and a founding member of
the Canadian Drug Policy Foundation.

But if restrictions on medicinal marijuana were relaxed as fully as
advocates would like, marijuana could be as widely used, he suggests, as an
over-the-counter painkiller.

Buyers' Clubs

It is in this void that "buyers' clubs" have developed, such as the
Compassion Club of Vancouver, a registered charity set up to supply
seriously ill people with marijuana. In Canada these clubs have generally
worked out a modus vivendi with the police.

In California, activists in such organizations have been prosecuted. Boje,
a graphic artist, says she was working with Mr. McCormick to establish a
buyers' club in southern California when she was arrested. She has insisted
that because of the new law and because McCormick had prescriptions for
marijuana, their activities were legal. Pretrial motions in McCormick's
trial were to begin yesterday in California.

Conroy expects to lose the Nov. 1 hearing but to appeal to Canada's federal
justice minister. Boje "is in fear of what will be done to her" if she goes
to a US prison. Amnesty International released a report earlier this year
about human rights violations against women in prison, which attracted
widespread attention here. The levels of abuse reported are a reason to
consider the American justice system "unjust and oppressive," according to
Conroy.