POT ACTIVISTS TO PICKET SCHOOL DRUG TALK

Denouncing as a smokescreen a city police drug awareness session,
cannabis community activists plan to picket a southeast high school
tomorrow in response.

Members of the pro-marijuana legalization group Calgary 420 said for
the first time they'll greet with placards attendees -- expected to
be both adults and students -- at Forest Lawn high school tomorrow
night to hear police discuss the dangers of drugs.

Group founder Keith Fagin said he's fed up with fearmongering on
marijuana and expects about a dozen activists to join him handing out
brochures on public property next to the school at 1304 44 St. S.E.

"We'll be handing out scientific information trying to sway them from
continuing their reefer madness insanity," said Fagin, who's consumed
marijuana for 35 years and uses it to alleviate symptoms of severe
muscle deterioration. Fagin acknowledged picketing a school may raise
public -- particularly parental -- hackles and that he's met with
verbal resistance at previous school events.

But he said it's not his intent to advocate drug use, rather to point
out the futility of what he calls "the lies" told to young people
about marijuana and the dangers of tougher drugs laws being proposed by Ottawa.

"Lying to them's not going to work," he said, adding numerous
government studies have called for more liberalized marijuana laws.
"It's not my biased opinion -- why isn't the government listening to
their own studies?"

Fagin said his attempts to be part of the awareness session panel
have been rebuffed but that he plans to attend the event and pose questions.

"I'm not there to be disruptive, I just want to ask them questions
and hopefully I'll be able to talk but it doesn't surprise me they
don't want to debate," he said.

Police have warned about the mental and physical risks of what they
call the much greater potency of contemporary marijuana.

A spokesman for the public school board wouldn't comment, saying the
event isn't being organized by the district.

Calgary 420 holds several downtown demonstrations a year where police
have arrested some participants for drug offences.