BEING PATIENT IN JAIL

Representatives of the 34 countries of the Organization of American States
gather in Ottawa this week to devise yet more futile tactics in the
80-year-old war on drugs. While they're here, we'd like to introduce the
assembled drug warriors to Grant Krieger. But we can't, because Mr.
Krieger, who suffers from severe multiple sclerosis, is in a Calgary jail
cell.

His crime? He grew 31 marijuana plants. Mr. Krieger says smoking marijuana
eases the agonizing pain of MS. With marijuana, he can stand up, and even
walk. Without it, he is stuck in a wheelchair. His wife credits pot with
saving her husband's life.

For staunch drug warriors, this alone makes Mr. Krieger a criminal. But he
went even further: He sold some of his marijuana, without profit, to other
very sick and dying people. That makes him, in the eyes of the law, a
pusher.

His trial won't be for months, and because he won't promise to stop his
dangerous criminal activity, he has been denied bail and so remains in jail.
Deprived of marijuana, he is in worsening pain and his slight frame has
already shed several precious pounds. If the persecution of Grant Krieger
doesn't seem like much of a triumph for public safety, blame the drug
warriors meeting in Ottawa. And blame their host, Canada's own federal
government.

For six years, the Chretien government doggedly ignored medical marijuana.
In fact, during that period, the number of prosecutions for marijuana
possession rapidly increased, so that, by 1997, they accounted for half of
all drug charges.

Then in June, under pressure from the opposition and two embarrassing court
cases, the government announced it would study medical marijuana and it
would, finally, use an existing power to exempt certain patients from the
ban on pot. Applications for exemptions would be settled within 15 days, we
were told.

As of today, just two exemptions have been granted. Both were for AIDS
patients who applied over a year before the announcement -- and who who were
involved in high-profile court battles. Another 75 formal applications have
been made to Health Canada. Not one has yet been decided.

The government says that's because applicants and their doctors haven't
provided as much information as needed. But time is of the essence for many
of these applicants. And really, when someone with full-blown AIDS insists
marijuana helps his appetite, do we need to know more? After all, what's the
worst that might happen if an AIDS patient uses marijuana that's not
strictly necessary? He gets a cough, maybe. Or is the worry that he will
experience some medically useless pleasure from a drug and thereby endanger
civilization as we know it? Clearly, a government that is serious about
medical marijuana would exempt whole classes of patients, starting with
those afflicted with AIDS.

But then, we suspect this government isn't serious about medical marijuana,
or about any other kind of drug reform. And it's not because of public
opinion -- the vast majority of Canadians support medical marijuana. In
fact, the reason for our government's intransigence may not be found in
Canada at all.

The war on drugs is a uniquely American frenzy. No developed country has so
passionately embraced the cops-and-jails model of dealing with drugs as the
United States, a country where one million non-violent convicts, mainly drug
offenders, are behind bars.

American politicians seem to view even medical marijuana as a Commie plot to
be resisted at all costs. An exemption program similar to our government's,
started in the liberal thaw of 1976, was effectively killed by drug warriors
in the 1980s who made the application process so burdensome no doctor would
get involved.

More recently, the White House's drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, who mocks
medical marijuana as "Cheech and Chong medicine," commissioned a
comprehensive study of the subject -- then ignored its conclusions that
smoked marijuana did have legitimate therapeutic value.

Happily, Americans don't seem to share their politicians' obsessions. In six
states, voters have said yes in referendums approving medical marijuana.
The District of Columbia also held a medical marijuana vote but Congress
actually forbade the counting of the ballots.

Given that the political leaders of the world's most powerful country are
this hysterical about marijuana, it's not difficult to imagine what they
think of the drug being made widely available for medical use right on their
doorstep. We can also only imagine what pressures American officials have
brought to bear on Canada to snap-to like a good drug warrior.

Is this the cause of the government's unconscionable delays in dealing with
medical marijuana? Is this the reason why AIDS patients, MS sufferers, and
others who seek out a relatively benign drug they believe can help them are
still being treated like criminal scum?

We suspect that Grant Krieger, and many others like him, would very much
like to know the answers to these questions. But Mr. Krieger, trapped in his
wheelchair and in a jail cell, won't be coming to Ottawa to get those
answers anytime soon.