ACTIVIST'S DREAM OF POT-STORE CHAIN HAS RIVALS FUMING

Montreal - If everything goes according to Gary Webber's plan, a
national chain of 250 medicinal marijuana franchises will spread
across Canada this summer.

It's a big "if." Mr. Webber's ambition may just turn out to be the
outlandish dream of an impatient activist - and if Montreal police
prove their criminal case against him, he may also be branded as
little more than an audacious dope peddler. Many pot activists already
question Mr. Webber's credibility, and blame him for bringing the
weight of police enforcement on them with his penchant for drawing
attention and threatening unbridled expansion.

However it pans out, Mr. Webber, 37, has already shaken up the world
of medical marijuana and may have set off events that could help clear
the legal murk shrouding pot's place in the nation's medicine cabinet.

For years, police have turned a blind eye to cannabis clubs, which
have openly sold pot to at least 21,000 Canadians. While standards
vary wildly, most above-ground clubs require customers to obtain a
note from a doctor, chiropractor or naturopath saying weed is needed
to treat illness or chronic pain. The dispensaries are still illegal,
however.

Police tolerance changed suddenly this year. In the past eight months,
shops in Nunavut, Toronto and Guelph, Ont., have been shut down, their
operators charged with illegally possessing or distributing pot. The
biggest raid took place in Quebec last month, where five clubs were
busted, including Mr. Webber's Culture 420 Compassion Society in the
Montreal suburb of Lachine.

While defence lawyers plan strategies, Mr. Webber says he is firing
back immediately. He says he will seek a court injunction this summer
to force police to leave clubs alone. He promises associates will open
dozens of new "franchises" this year, quickly surpassing the number of
outlets of some well-known national chains. Mr. Webber declines to
disclose the identity of his backers or precise locations.

"We're going to move forward, regardless. We will open 15 clubs within
the greater Montreal area within 30 days," Mr. Webber said. "There are
court orders that say the current situation in Canada is
unconstitutional. We want to force authorities to honour that."

Activists and legal scholars in Ontario and Quebec, with long records
of winning pot cases, are preparing for their own legal challenges.

"A compassion club's mandate is to take care of seriously ill
Canadians. A lot of constitutional claims can be made to protect a
club from conviction," said Osgoode Hall legal scholar Alan Young. "No
legitimate compassion club has ever been convicted."

Legitimacy is a question that dogs Mr. Webber, who opened Culture 420
earlier this year. (Prof. Young, for one, doesn't intend to help
Culture 420, saying he represents only clubs he can prove are
legitimate.) Mr. Webber's competitors say his marketing schemes and
loose membership rules forced the hand of police, who have let other
clubs operate in peace since the last criminal case against them was
thrown out in 2002.

While established clubs in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver have run
quietly for years, Culture 420 was a short-lived attention-getter. It
ran ads and used such ploys as offering a free gram of marijuana to
clients who brought in new customers. Dozens of buyers streamed in
daily, including many student-aged customers.

Culture 420 gained 2,000 members in just two months - rivalling
membership at the longstanding Montreal Compassion Centre and
Toronto's Cannabis As Living Medicine on Queen Street. "You can't run
around scaring people," said Marc-Boris St-Maurice, the head of the
Montreal centre. "I'm quite certain [Mr. Webber's] ambitions are part
of what led to what happened to us. If they succeed in opening 10
places in the Montreal area. . well, I for one am quite sensitive to
the concerns authorities may have with that."

Mr. Webber argues the incremental approach has just produced
confusion, arrests and the denial of vital medical supplies for sick
users. He has a personal medical stake in the fight - he uses pot to
treat his own chronic pain from unsuccessful operations to correct a
birth defect in the bone structure of his lower body. After years of
suffering on prescription opiates, he says cannabis finally give him
pain relief.

"We want to give Canadians God's medicine," Mr. Webber said.