MEDICINAL MARIJUANA USER SUES CITY OF ABBOTSFORD

A licensed medicinal marijuana user is suing the City of Abbotsford along
with its police department for $19,250 in compensation following a raid at
a Bradner Road property last month.

Brian Carlisle, a criminology student at the University College of the
Fraser Valley, uses marijuana to ease the overpowering nausea that stems
from the medication he takes to treat his symptoms of HIV/AIDS.

Since last fall, Carlisle has held a permit to grow marijuana at the
Bradner road property of marijuana activist Tim Felger. On Jan. 6,
Abbotsford police raided the property and uncovered 2,090 marijuana plants.

"How did [the police] get permission to raid a garden licence?" Carlisle
asks. "The address was given to Health Canada and the police can check on
that," he said.

Felger and another man were arrested as they were leaving the property to
deliver the pot to Carlisle who said he had asked them to deliver the
medicinal pot to him as his car couldn't make it through the snow.

Following Felger's arrest, Carlisle was taken back to the Bradner Road
property by police to retrieve the 25 plants he was growing there for his
own use. He recalls how the officers stumbled across some dry marijuana in
their search.

Carlisle says he immediately claimed the pot as his own, only to have the
officers tell him that he would have to go to court to get it back. In his
B.C. Supreme Court suit, Carlisle is seeking compensation for 1,925 grams
of dried pot.

"I tried to settle this matter out of court," Carlisle said. "I talked with
the lawyers for the City of Abbotsford and the police department. They were
saying that obviously something was wrong and they were going to try and
negotiate with me."

After he didn't hear back from either party, Carlisle felt he was left with
no choice but to begin his lawsuit.

"They were being unreasonable by stalling," Carlisle said.

Abbotsford police Const. Shinder Kirk said that police tried to ensure that
Carlisle was accommodated after serving a warrant on the property at
Bradner Road. When police became aware that some plants legally belonged to
Carlisle as a medicinal marijuana user, they permitted retrieval, Kirk said.

"We are extremely understanding of the need for medicinal marijuana for
certain individuals that have gone through the proper channels of being
licensed," Kirk said. "But at issue here, in addition to those 25 plants,
there were more than 2,000 plants."

Previously Carlisle had been growing his own marijuana plants until he was
beaten and shocked with a Taser by masked attackers in his Chilliwack home
last September. No arrests were made in that incident.

He said he's too afraid to grow the marijuana himself, saying the danger of
home invasion is so prevalent. Which means that Carlisle is now without any
relief from the nausea that plagues him on a daily basis.

"I vomit several times a day," Carlisle said. "My body is going through
such torture. I cry as I suffer. I need marijuana more than ever now."

Carlisle"s experience has left him believing that there is no safe way to
get medicinal marijuana in Canada. And he won"t go to the black market to
get it.

However Carlisle has found trust in the foreign markets, saying that he is
seeking permission to use Sativex, a cannabis-based medicinal extract
product that is manufactured in the United Kingdom. Sativex, which is
administered through a spray in the mouth, is commonly used for the relief
of neuropathy pain in Multiple Sclerosis sufferers.

"It"s my only solution right now," Carlisle said.

In terms of his case against the City of Abbotsford, Carlisle feels quite
confident that he will be receiving full monetary compensation.

Abbotsford Mayor Mary Reeves was unable to comment on the case, saying that
the matter was under litigation.

"It will be up to the courts to determine a appropriate response," Reeves said.

It"s the second time that Carlisle has brought a case against a police
force for confiscating his marijuana. In a January 2003 ruling, Madam
Justice Linda Loo ordered Hope RCMP to return plants and equipment taken in
June 2001 from Carlisle"s former home in Hope.

Felger, a Marijuana Party candidate in the last federal election, remains
in custody and will appear in Abbotsford provincial court again in July.