OTTAWA LOSES POT CHALLENGE

(CNS) - The federal government lost another court challenge to its
controversial medical marijuana program, and now has 30 days to
decide whether to appeal the ruling that declared one of its key
policies unconstitutional.

Under the current set of regulations, licensed producers are only
allowed to grow the drug for one patient at a time. Federal Court
Judge Barry Strayer said that one-to-one ratio violates the Charter
of Rights and Freedoms.

The decision, the latest in a string of court cases, will essentially
mean more choice for approved medical marijuana users and should
provide easier access for them to the drug.

"What the federal court effectively did was assert that the
government of Canada does not have a monopoly over the production and
distribution of medical marijuana," said Alan Young, one of the
lawyers who launched the court battle on behalf of 30 patients.

'NOT TENABLE'

Authorized users who cannot grow their own marijuana because they are
too ill, or for other reasons, must then rely on a sole source
provider -- either a licensed private producer, if they can find one
willing to produce only for them, or the government, which buys the
plants from a Saskatchewan-based company.

"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," Strayer
wrote in his decision.