MAHARISHI ROCK'S SICKENING SPEECH

For just a few moments, I was blissed out like a Beatle playing the sitar.
Allan Rock, the health minister, put me in that Nirvana last week when he
announced that 14 sick or dying people wouldn't be busted, 'cuffed, and
locked up if they used marijuana to ease their suffering. Such compassion.
Rock spoke of humanity and felt everyone's pain. He was enlightened. He was
a maharishi in a silk tie. He was Gandhi in pinstripes.

But then I made a phone call and dropped to earth like a tequila drinker
who eats the worm. I spoke with John Klaver, a 51-year-old veteran of the
Edmonton fire department, who, in three decades of service built an
impressive resume: decorated, held rank of captain, worked as fire
investigator. But he may soon have to add another line: convicted drug
criminal.

Klaver has struggled with a drug, it's true, but it was the one the law
likes: alcohol. He was once a severe alcoholic, but he beat that years ago.

After becoming embroiled in workplace politics, he began to suffer clinical
depression. His appetite shrank and he lost 50 of his 200 pounds. He turned
to marijuana because, as anyone who has seen a Cheech and Chong film knows,
it can stimulate a raging appetite. It worked for Klaver.

But thanks to the law, getting this life-saver posed a dilemma. "I didn't
like going to a dealer and supporting organized crime," Klaver told me. "So
I decided to grow my own." He and another firefighter, who smokes marijuana
to relieve muscle spasms, grew marijuana plants in Klaver's home. They
never sold or gave it away. It was for personal use only.

In September, 1998, the RCMP smashed this little drug cartel. Klaver, his
partner in horticulture, and their wives were charged with cultivation and
possession with intent to traffic.

The charges, when they hit the media, sounded horrible. Growing a few
plants in the privacy of your own home is one thing in the public mind.
"Trafficking" is quite another. Allan Young, the Klavers' lawyer, is
confident the small amount of marijuana seized won't support the "intent to
traffic" charge, but that's the kind of detail that doesn't make it into
standard newspaper reports.

On top of this, the RCMP inflated the value of the plants seized -- 42 in
total, each between five and eight centimetres tall -- claiming, at various
times, that the marijuana was worth anywhere between $30,000 and $100,000.

The combined effect was awful. Not only was Klaver accused of trafficking.
he was supposed to have been caught red-handed with -- as one story put it
- -- "a hydroponic operation and an estimated $60,000 of marijuana." His
reputation was ruined. The fire department sent Klaver a letter warning
that he would be watched for signs of intoxication. Yet when he'd written
publicly about his alcoholism years before, the department hadn't said a
word. Seeing the pink slip on the wall, Klaver retired.

His insurance company of many years notified the retired fire inspector
that it wouldn't be renewing his fire insurance. No explanation given. A
broker told him off the record it was the pot charges.

Having taken hits from the RCMP, the fire department, and the insurance
company, Klaver and his wife are now bracing for the justice system's turn
with the bat. Their trial is scheduled for February 22. The Crown wants
both to get six months in jail.

By this point in my conversation with John Klaver, I was no longer a happy
Beatle. I was furious at the injustice, at the tax dollars wasted and at
the countless stories like this and much worse that litter the country.

But most of all, it's the hypocrisy that's maddening. The Liberals did
nothing about medical marijuana for five years. When they finally acted,
they did so only because court cases and opposition tactics forced them to.
Now they're moving at a glacial speed which is torture for sick people who
know that time is precious. Yet Allan Rock has the gall to talk of humanity.

Allan Rock was the justice minister who restructured the drug laws but
chose to maintain the status quo of persecuting people like John Klaver.
And it was during Allan Rock's tenure as justice minister, then as health
minister, that marijuana-related charges rocketed up until, by 1997, they
accounted for 70 per cent of all drug offences; pot possession alone
accounted for half of all drug offences.

So should we get all blissed out when Allan Rock announces that a tiny
handful of very sick people won't be sent to jail for trying to save their
own lives? Is he really being compassionate? Is he Gandhi in pinstripes?

No. As far as I can see, he's just another politician in an expensive suit.