ROCK TO EXEMPT 12 MARIJUANA USER FROM PROSECUTION

Allan Rock, the Health Minister, is expected to announce this week that he
will exempt from criminal prosecution approximately a dozen Canadians who
use marijuana to relieve medical problems, the National Post has learned.

The exemptions for the yet-unnamed individuals will be the first granted by
Mr. Rock since he allowed unprecedented legal access to marijuana for two
AIDS patients last June after the Ontario Superior Court ruled that lack of
such access contravened a patient's rights under the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms.

Mr. Rock has since received some 90 requests from patients across the
country asking permission to use the banned substance to relieve the
symptoms of diseases, including glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, manic
depression, cancer and AIDS.

The exemptions are being announced at the same time as the constitutional
issues surrounding the regulation of marijuana return this week before the
judiciary. An appeal to begin on Wednesday at the Ontario Court of Appeal
will challenge Parliament's right to regulate the drug.

Just as Mr. Rock's exemption policy comes into full swing, however, the
minister is facing increased pressure to provide a source of marijuana to
the exemption holders who complain they have been given the right to use,
but not to purchase, the illegal drug.

The exemptions granted under Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and
Substances Act allow patients to grow cannabis in their homes. But some
patients say they are too inexperienced or too ill to engage in horticulture.

"The exemption does not resolve all the issues," Jim Wakeford, who launched
the successful Charter challenge, wrote to Mr. Rock after two of his
suppliers were arrested. "I have no legal access to marijuana and there is
no protection from criminal penalties for my caregivers, people who help
look after me during periods of illness."

Mr. Wakeford is asking that the government create a medically regulated
supply of marijuana for medical use. He is also asking Mr. Rock to exempt
from prosecution caregivers and cultivators who supply marijuana to the ill.

Sources close to the health minister say he has not ruled out either
option. Indeed, Mr. Rock has instructed the Health Department to develop a
business plan and a timetable for the development of a Canadian-grown
source of marijuana for medical use. He is considering using such a
domestic crop to supply patients.

Mr. Rock is also said to be looking for a way to be "flexible" in the case
of caregivers.

While the minister mulls his options, however, prosecutions are proceeding.

Aubert Martins, an Ottawa-area cultivator who supplied marijuana to a group
of cancer and AIDS patients, including Jean-Charles Pariseau, the second
Canadian to receive an exemption from Mr. Rock, will appear in court this
week to set a date for his trial on charges of production and possession of
marijuana.

In March, RCMP raided Mr. Martins' basement apartment, seizing 178
marijuana plants and growing equipment after media reports described his
efforts to supply marijuana to the ill.

The charges carry a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.

As Mr. Rock proceeds with his policy of exemptions for individual patients,
the Appeal Court of Ontario -- the highest court yet to consider the issue
- -- will, on Wednesday, hear arguments concerning the removal of marijuana
offences from the Criminal Code.

Alan Young, professor at York University's Osgoode Hall law school, will
draw on rulings in two separate lower-court decisions on joint appeal to
argue for decriminalization. In 1997, a lower court convicted Chris Clay, a
recreational marijuana smoker in London, Ont., but not before finding
marijuana to be "harmless." Mr. Clay is appealing his conviction. The same
year, in the case of Terry Parker, a Toronto epileptic, a lower court ruled
marijuana to be "therapeutic" and gave Mr. Parker access to the drug. The
Crown is appealing that judgment.