COMPASSION SOCIETY DEFENDS SOOKE GROW-OP IN COURT

Philippe Lucas, head of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, will be in
at the Western Communities court house tomorrow and Friday for a
preliminary trial into a RCMP raid on the compassion society's grow-op in
Sooke.

Lucas plans to use the case to springboard a constitutional challenge to
the right to life and freedom in higher courts over the lack of access to
medicinal marijuana in Canada.

After the Terry Parker case in January 2003, the Ontario Court of Appeal
ordered the Canadian government to distribute pot, said Lucas.

But Canadian government pot is of poor quality and it is too hard to
acquire a medical exemption to legally smoke it, Lucas argued.

The Canadian government is not aiding people as they were court ordered to
do. It is actually restricting people (from acquiring pot), said Lucas.