HUNGER STRIKER "BELIEVED HE WAS DOING A HEROIC ACT"

As Juliana Bazso mourns her brother's death, she takes comfort from
knowing he died for his beliefs.

"In his soul, he believed he was doing a heroic act and when the
police clamped down on him, it was so bad he knew he couldn't do it
any more," she said.

Istvan (Steve) Marton, 69, the local marijuana dealer in Sointula, off
the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, died in Port MacNeill
Hospital Sunday after more than a month on a hunger strike to protest
Canada's marijuana laws.

Marton's doctor, Jane Clelland, said he died after a massive heart
attack, but the hunger strike and other underlying health problems
contributed to his death.

Clelland said he was nonresponsive for the last day of his life, but
not totally unaware, and she believes he knew that the story of his
crusade appeared in the Times Colonist that day.

Despite Marton's hopes that his friends would be treated to an
unlimited booze-and-pot party after his death, Bazso said the money he
left will not stretch that far.

"If these friends of his want a celebration of his life, they can do
it with their own money," said Bazso, who never agreed with her
brother about breaking the law to sell marijuana. "I don't think I am
going to condone what I never condoned all my life," she said.

But Bazso believes that the marijuana laws will eventually have to be
changed in Canada.

"I think his death will add to the pressure on government," she said.

Friends said they do not know whether there are others ready to go on
hunger strikes to protest marijuana laws, as Marton claimed.

"I hope there aren't any. We need every combatant we can get for the
revolution that is just getting underway," said friend and former
customer Des McMurchy.

"I think Steve was clever enough to recognize the power of personal
example and incremental change."

The war on drugs has been a massive failure of moral choice and public
policy, McMurchy said.

"There is unlimited opportunity here with full legalization and
taxation of production and use of marijuana, to remove the undesirable
criminal element from marijuana production," he said. "This is the
path that Steve understood that we need to follow."

Supplies of marijuana in Sointula will be tight, McMurchy said.

Another friend, John McPhee, is not so optimistic that Marton's death
will have any effect on the law.

"You can protest a lot of things, but nothing is ever going to
happen," he said.