MEDICAL POT USERS WIN MORE FREEDOM

TORONTO -- Canadians who are prescribed marijuana
to treat their illnesses will no longer be forced to rely on the
federal government as a supplier following a Federal Court ruling that
struck down a key restriction in Ottawa's controversial medical
marijuana program.

The decision by Judge Barry Strayer, released late yesterday,
essentially grants medical marijuana users more freedom in picking
their own grower and allows growers to supply the drug to more than
one patient.

It's also another blow to the federal government, whose attempts to
tightly control access to medical marijuana have prompted numerous
court challenges.

Currently, medical users can grow their own pot but growers can't
supply the drug to more than one user at a time.

Lawyers for medical users argued restriction effectively established
Health Canada as the country's sole legal provider of medical marijuana.

They also said the restriction was unfair, and prevented seriously ill
Canadians from obtaining the drug needed to treat debilitating illnesses.

In his decision, Strayer called the provision unconstitutional and
arbitrary.

Ottawa must also reconsider requests made by a group of medical users
who brought the matter to court to have a single outside supplier as
their designated producer, Strayer said in his 23-page decision.

While the government has argued medical users who can't grow their own
marijuana can obtain it from its contract manufacturer, fewer than 20%
of patients use the government's supply, Strayer wrote.

"In my view it is not tenable for the government, consistently with
the right established in other courts for qualified medical users to
have reasonable access to marijuana, to force them either to buy from
the government contractor, grow their own or be limited to the
unnecessarily restrictive system of designated producers," he wrote.

Ron Marzel, a Toronto lawyer representing the group of medical users
who brought the matter before the Federal Court, called the decision a
"great remedy" for his clients.

"All this means is that the limit -- the one-to-one ratio -- it's the
last nail in the coffin for that ratio," he said in an interview.

The provision had been struck down by the courts before, but was
reinstated by the government which contracted Prairie Plant Systems
Inc. in Flin Flon, Man., to provide the drug to patients.

"(It was) constitutionally suspect from the beginning," said lawyer
Alan Young, who argued in court on behalf of the sick.

Ottawa could either rewrite the regulations, come up with a new ratio,
"or they can simply leave it as an open market so that people who are
experienced and have the right secure facility will be able to apply
to grow for 10 patients, 20 patients," Young said.