POT LAWS UNFAIR TO SICK, COURT TOLD

Drug's Value Outweighs Harm, Critics Claim

It's unfair for Ottawa to deprive sick and dying Canadians of access
to medical marijuana because of fear of long-term harm, Ontario's top
court has been told.

``Do we really tell a terminally ill AIDS patient that he can't use
this to alleviate his symptoms because there is a chance he might get
bronchitis in 30 years?'' University of Toronto law professor Ed
Morgan asked yesterday. Morgan was representing the Epilepsy
Association of Toronto, which is intervening in an appeal by
Torontonian Terry Parker, one of two men before the Ontario Court of
Appeal hoping to reform Canada's marijuana laws.

Activist Christopher Clay, 28, wants the drug decriminalized for
recreational and other uses while Parker, 42, an epileptic, is
fighting for medical consumption.

The federal government, in arguing to uphold the 76-year-old criminal
law ban on marijuana, pointed this week to studies showing the
potential for lung damage from smoking the drug.

Justice department lawyer Kevin Wilson added yesterday that mechanisms
now exist for chronically ill Canadians to apply to Health Minister
Allan Rock for a legal exemption allowing them to use marijuana
without being charged.

But Richard Macklin, one of Parker's lawyers, said the process is far
from solid and the federal government only seems to grant exemptions
on the eve of court cases where the marijuana ban is under attack.

``Who reviews the applications? What are the criteria? Do you have to
be at death's door? And are these exemptions handed out on court dates
only?'' he asked.

Macklin argued the exemption process wasn't even up and running in
1996 when police raided Parker's home, charged him and confiscated
marijuana plants he was growing for a drug supply to control his seizures.

Although a judge stayed charges in 1997, the federal justice
department is appealing the decision, arguing Parker can get the same
benefits as marijuana by taking a pill such as Marinol, which contains
a synthetic form of the psychoactive ingredient THC.

Parker's lawyer Aaron Harnett said it isn't THC, but CBD, another
substance found only in smoked marijuana, that appears to control
seizures. Moreover, no doctor has ever prescribed Marinol for his
client, he said.

In fact, the only advice given to Parker has been to increase the
dosage of his conventional medicine, which carries side effects
including liver damage, or to undergo further brain surgery, Harnett
added.

Parker had frontal lobectomy operations when he was 14 and 16 in a bid
to control his seizures, which started to appear after he was struck
in the head by a swing at age 4, the court was told.