A MAN OF PRINCIPLE

Grant Krieger is 45 years old and he is sick. He has multiple sclerosis.
Grant also does something the government says is bad. Grant uses weed,
a.k.a. marijuana.

He smokes it and eats it, in things like butter and brownies. And when
Grant uses weed it makes him feel better, much better than popping pills on
prescription.

Somehow this is very wrong. You see, the 5-ft.-9, 134-lb. Grant sits for a
second week in his wheelchair, getting sicker in jail, in a cell in a part
of the Calgary Remand Centre he jokingly refers to as the "astronaut
training unit."

Grant is charged with smoking weed, growing weed and selling weed to people
who are sick. Some who go to Grant have AIDS, others have cancer or
hepatitis C.

This is not the first time Grant has fought the law. He's been convicted of
trafficking before and the courts have fined him and given him probation.

Grant doesn't visit the probation officer because he does not think the
prosecution of him is right. So, Grant has also been charged with breaching
his probation.

Agree with him or not, Grant fights for what he sees as a principle, the
right of the sick to use marijuana to relieve their pain. On this day, at
the Remand Centre, Grant is not well.

"I hurt like hell. It feels like a charleyhorse rolling through every 45
seconds in a different part of my body," says Grant.

"Weed helps my quality of life. What's wrong with that? Why should I live
in pain and walk off-balance and on tippy-toes? It's the best muscle
relaxant I've ever found in my life. It really helps relax my muscle spasms."

"It's odd. Back at the Olympics, the politicians said Ross Rebagliati
should get his gold medal because it was only a little bit of pot."

"The rest of us with a little bit of pot are in wheelchairs and are sick
and we don't get medals.

"How come I've got bloody criminal charges? It doesn't wash."

Grant had his first onset of MS two decades ago and his condition took a
dive after a series of car crashes seven years ago.

He was fed pharmaceutical drugs but didn't like the side effects -- the
wild mood swings, the shaking he couldn't control.

He walked with crutches, a knee brace and things got worse.

"Some days, I was bed ridden. I couldn't leave home without the chance I
would crap my pants. But I said to myself: I am not going back into diapers."

Five years ago, Grant finally had it and overdosed on Demerol and sleeping
pills, waking up in the hospital.

In that same year, Grant started smoking weed and felt better. Then he
began selling to other sick people.

"When you're sick it's only sick people you see. Normal people don't want
to hang with you," he chuckles.

Grant apparently didn't get rich from the practice. His wife went bankrupt
a while ago and he lives modestly on a $774 monthly disability cheque.

This last time, the police came to Grant's backyard and saw two pot plants
on the picnic table. They seized 29 plants in all and also took the scales
and lights.

Serving a second week behind bars, Grant wants out.

Grant says at his Wednesday bail hearing he will promise a judge he won't
grow or sell marijuana anymore, though Grant will still partake of nature's
wonder plant.

"I will smoke weed. They're forcing me to go back on the streets to get an
inferior product that costs a lot more than it's worth and I'm helping an
underground economy," says Grant.

"I'm looking for a good cultivator now."

In the background, a voice filled with authority suddenly speaks. "It's
lockdown," says Grant.

The smoker of weed wheels back to his cell.