NV RCMP SEIZE MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Licensed, Medical Marijuana User Files Complaint After Arrest

A Coquitlam man who suffers from a serious medical condition has
filed a complaint against the North Vancouver RCMP after they seized
his medical marijuana and the federal licence that allows him to carry it.

Teejay Alipour was leaving the McDonald's restaurant on Lonsdale
Avenue in a car with his brother just after midnight May 17 when a
North Vancouver officer pulled them over. The officer told the men he
had received a tip relating to marijuana use and asked them to step
out of the vehicle. A search turned up a bag of the drug, which the
25-year-old uses by prescription, as well as two documents from
Health Canada -- one of them a valid paper permit from the current
year, and the other an expired, laminated permit from 2010.

Alipour explained he was a licensed medical user, but the officer
nonetheless handcuffed both men and questioned them in the back of a
police cruiser. After some discussion, and the arrival of two more
North Vancouver Mounties, Alipour's drugs and documents were confiscated.

The officers also performed a sobriety test on Alipour's brother --
described by Alipour as an eye test -- and deemed him unfit to drive.
Their vehicle was towed, and the officers handed Alipour's brother a
24-hour roadside suspension together with tickets for allegedly not
wearing a seatbelt and for having an old address on his driver's
licence, according to Alipour. He denies his brother was intoxicated.
Both men were released without charge.

Alipour, who works in North Vancouver, went to the detachment the
next day and asked for his medication and permits to be returned, but
was told he would have to come back at 8 p.m., when the corporal
overseeing the file was back on shift. Eventually, at approximately 4
p.m., Alipour called Health Canada, and a short time later -- after
the agency had apparently contacted the detachment -- the items were
returned to him, 16 hours after they were taken.

While Alipour was happy to have his medication and licence back, he
said, the incident left him upset and angry. He said he didn't
understand why his documentation didn't protect him from detainment
and his medicine from seizure.

"Why did they have to put us in handcuffs?" he said. "I wasn't able
to sleep for 48 hours after this incident. . . . They were basically
bullying me, (asking) me why I'm using this medicine."

Alipour has since lodged a formal complaint.

Sgt. Peter DeVries, a spokesman for the North Vancouver RCMP,
defended the officers' actions. DeVries said he was limited in what
he could say about the case, but asserted that the officer, who was
familiar with the laws around medical marijuana, was obliged to
confiscate the items because he suspected the paper licence might not be valid.

The Health Canada document, a copy of which was provided to the North
Shore News, features Alipour's name, address and other information,
the name of his physician, the signature of an official with the
agency, and text at the top noting it is a renewal of a previous permit.

"This document . . . will serve as proof of your authority to possess
marijuana for a medical purpose," it reads. It goes on to note the
holder should keep the document on his person "in case you are
required to show proof to the police."

It authorizes Alipour to possess up to 900 grams of the drug, many
times the amount seized.

Unsure if the document was legitimate, the Mountie attempted to
verify Alipour's claim with Health Canada via the agency's dedicated,
24-hour pager hotline that is provided to police specifically for
this purpose, according to DeVries -- a claim Alipour disputes.

When there was no answer, the officer took the medication and
associated documents as a precaution, said DeVries.

But if the issue was that the licence was a paper form as opposed to
a more common plastic card, the officer had no grounds to confiscate
the drug, said Kirk Tousaw, a lawyer whose practice revolves in large
part around medical marijuana cases.

"Paper licences are the permanent licences; they are the actual
licence," he said. "The plastic card is . . . simply the convenience
card that Health Canada (sends) out."

As soon as the officer saw something resembling a valid permit, he
should have left Alipour alone, said Tousaw.

"The proper response by the police is: 'Thank you very much, sir.
Sorry to disturb you. You can go about your business.'"

If the officer had legitimate suspicions about the document, said the
lawyer, he should have left it with Alipour, looked into it when they
had time to and, if it turned out to be a fake, tracked him down at
that point using the information they had gathered during the stop.

"It's not like (he's) walking away from the encounter with a bag of
uranium," said Tousaw. "At a certain point, we have to balance the
alleged seriousness of the offence with the ramifications of seizing
medicine from an ill person. Worst-case scenario, the guy is faking
it, he has a fake licence and he gets away temporarily with
possession of . . . marijuana. This is about the least serious crime
I can imagine occurring."

Had Alipour been carrying any other medication, the encounter
wouldn't even have happened, said Tousaw. He cited the example of
prescription pain relievers, many of which are addictive and find
their way onto the black market as a result.

"If this gentleman had been carrying a bottle of Oxycontin or even a
couple of pills, would it be seized, and would he have his
prescription taken away until they could verify its validity with a
doctor?" asked Tousaw. "It's only because it's marijuana. I think it
reveals a bias, this belief that somehow marijuana is not medicine."

Singling out medical marijuana users is unnecessarily traumatic for
people who are already sick and stigmatized as a result of their
treatment, he said.

"I don't know if you've ever been stopped by police and had your
property seized, but I can tell you it's a very stressful, very
emotionally disturbing experience."

But DeVries said such condemnation doesn't take into account the
difficulty of the task facing officers on the street. Police have to
act on the few available clues they have, and while it's not unheard
of for them to examine or seize other prescription drugs, marijuana
tends to be targeted more frequently because of its proliferation and
its ready identifiability by smell.

DeVries said the North Vancouver RCMP are taking Alipour's complaint
seriously, and are in the process of investigating it.

This type of incident is ultimately the result of Canada's approach
to regulation, said Tousaw.

"Let's always remember the only reason this sick person was harrassed
is because we have made a bad decision in prohibiting marijuana
generally in the first place," he said. "Let's never forget that
fact. That is the beginning and the end of all the problems with
marijuana in our society."