EX-POT CRUSADER TIRED, RESIGNED

'Flawed' System Leaves Krieger Hermit With Dogs

As expected of someone who indulges in the medicinal use of marijuana,
Grant Krieger is a gentle soul. His dogs, not so much.

Upon arrival at Krieger's house, visitors are greeted by a pack of six
barking hounds. One, a half-wolf named Shifty, stays in the
background, swaying back and forth. Before long, the dogs settle. They
surround the visitor, seeking pats on the head, shakes of outstretched
paws and an irresistible scratch behind the ear. All, that is, but the
wary Shifty, who dares to enter the room only after nearly an hour and
remains aloof.

The home has a lived-in, bachelor look: the TV is on, there's an
ironing board in the living room, DVDs are lined up on the floor,
tattered throws cover furniture in a futile effort to protect them
against fur. On the kitchen table is the beginning of a 1,000-piece
jigsaw puzzle of a snow leopard. A treadmill sits in the middle of
another room, where a rowing machine is propped against a wall.

Krieger offers herbal tea. We sit in the room with the TV blaring and
begin to talk of his 13-year legal struggle as a medicinal marijuana
advocate, which the multiple sclerosis sufferer ended this week by
signing a legal document pledging to not engage in any cultivation or
distribution.

The windows are covered to block natural light, the entrance-way dark.
The room has the mood and feel of a comfortable cave.

"I've become a hermit," says the gaunt 54-year-old. "I don't even like
to leave the house anymore be-cause I don't like police officers."

Krieger's crusade has cost him a marriage, the estrangement of family,
his driving privileges and debt. It is the sad and tragic story of an
individual fighting a system stacked against him, a system that never
tolerated his in-your-face defiance of what he felt were unjust laws.

One could argue that he became his own worst enemy. If Krieger had
simply stuck quietly to his personal use of medicinal marijuana, as he
was legally allowed to do, he might have escaped the torment of
enforcement officials and a judiciary that treated him like a pusher.
Instead, Krieger listened to the call of his kind heart.

His sin, in the minds of the authorities, was running a compassion
club to assist other sick people by supplying them with pot--not to
smoke, but to make into a mild cannabis butter to be ingested, and
without using what he calls the toxic, low-grade government skunkweed
grown for medicinal use in an abandoned Manitoba mine.

He was twice convicted and twice acquitted for trafficking. One
acquittal was ordered by no less than the Supreme Court of Canada,
which ruled in 2006 that an Alberta judge erred in telling a jury it
had no choice but to find Krieger guilty. That astonishing Alberta
conviction was overturned 7-0 by the higher court.

In 2007, Krieger was again convicted of trafficking and sentenced to
four months. The judge ruled that Krieger should be provided medicinal
marijuana while in jail, but Corrections Canada refused to allow it,
resulting in Krieger's agreement this week to disavow any further
cultivation or distribution in exchange for 18 months probation.

"It's Alberta. What more can I say?" he says, not bitterly, but with a
note of exasperation.

Multiple sclerosis first took hold of Krieger when he was 24. He was
working as a food sales representative when his vision became blurred,
an early indicator of MS. As the condition progressed, his body began
pulsing with what MS sufferers describe as electrical jolts that occur
when the body's own immune system attacks and damages the insulating
myelin sheath that protects nerve fibres. His hands became so stiff he
used a rubber stamp for his signature.

"My kids loved me," he says, referring to his three children's ability
to sneak the stamp out of a drawer and ink dad's signature on their
report cards.

In 1996, Krieger went to the European pot mecca of Amsterdam and got a
doctor's prescription to use marijuana to ease his affliction. He
openly attempted to bring some pot back to Canada from Amsterdam in an
effort to test Canada's medicinal marijuana laws. He was arrested by
military police in the Netherlands and put on the plane without his
pot, sparing him a potential life sentence under Canadian law for
importing drugs. When he landed at Pearson Airport in Toronto, he was
in a wheelchair and wincing in pain.

Soon, police in Saskatchewan, where he lived at the time, were raiding
his home. His wife, Marie, was charged with possession. His daughter,
a law student, moved out, fearing she, too, could get charged. When
Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ross Rebagliati was awarded a gold medal
in 1998 despite his pot use, Krieger was miffed at the double standard.

"They're busting up families-- but Ross got his medal," he
said.

Thus began Krieger's unrelenting challenge of Canada's intransigent
attitude to medical marijuana--not changed until 2001--which he
credited with alleviating his need for a wheelchair or even crutches.

He moved to Calgary and began passing out pot on the doorstep of the
courthouse, resulting in his first trafficking charge.

Given a constitutional exemption to possess marijuana for personal use
for one year, Krieger was driven to help others. He set up the
Universal Compassion Club, which attracted the attention of police,
and thieves. In 1999, someone broke into his Calgary house and stole
his entire stash. Shortly thereafter, Krieger was arrested and charged
with breach of probation for possessing a half-smoked joint.

On and on it went, with arrests, probation, re-arrests, trials and
appeals that went to the highest court in the land. His auto insurance
was revoked out of concern his medicinal marijuana use would result in
him driving under the influence.

"They've taken everything away from me. It's cost me everything, these
drugs laws, which are against our charter of rights. Financially, it's
cost me tons. I'm in hock up to my eyeballs. It cost me a whole pile
of friends. The people who came to help me, in reality, they helped
themselves. It's cost me family."

Marie, with whom he had writ-ten a book, Cooking for Life: Recipes with
Cannabis Butter,
could take it no more and left.

"I never talked to her for three years, but we've just started talking
in the last couple of years," says Krieger. "I never talked to my
daughter for three years."

Unable to rent a house due to his notoriety, he has been taken in by
two of his children and rotates between their residences on the
stipulation that he not grow any pot, which would negate their insurance.

"The kids don't want any more harassment from police. They've had
enough. And to tell you the truth, I've had enough. I used to trust in
the system, but not anymore. They're all flawed, down to the insurance
companies, down to the doctors, the politicians, even the judicial
system is flawed."

He's turned to the black market, recently paying $800 for an
ounce.

For Grant Krieger, the system he fought for so long has won. He spends
his days inside doing jigsaw puzzles and trying to lead a quiet life.
He shuffles, but without the aid of medical devices. With his arrests,
his chances of travelling to the United States are zero. He'll never
feel the warmth of the Arizona sun on his aching body.

"I listen to music, put DVDs in. I do my jigsaw puzzles,"he says. "And
I pick up dog s--t. Lots of dog s--t."