UVIC POT TRIAL DELAYED

VICTORIA - Every Wednesday at 4:20 p.m., dozens of University of
Victoria students gather near the campus fountain to show support for
sick people who struggle to treat their conditions with medicinal marijuana.

While nearly all the students are healthy, the university's Hempology
101 club attracts attention by supporting the use of illegal drugs.
During meetings, members of the Cannabis Buyers' Club provide updates
on current events involving medicinal marijuana while dozens of
students pass joints around a circle.

The activist responsible for Hempology 101, one of the largest student
clubs at the university, is Leon (Ted) Smith, but he has not set foot
on campus since Nov. 8, 2000. Smith was charged with possession and
trafficking, with evidence supplied by an undercover officer who had
pocketed one of the joints passed out during a Hempology 101 meeting.
Since then, Smith has been banned from campus.

"They took my microphone and speaker," he said.

Four years have passed, and a trial was to begin recently to determine
the outcome of the charges. Hoping for an acquittal, Smith's victory
would be celebrated by nothing short of his triumphant march back onto
university soil.

Instead, the trial has been delayed again until January 2005. Two
different trials were scheduled to take place at the same time with
the same judge. The final decision was to go forward with another case
that had been put off for two years, as opposed to Smith's own trial,
which had nearly hit its four-year anniversary.

Smith remains positive, hoping the delay of one his most difficult
trials will provide him better grounds to argue what he considers his
constitutional rights. Smith plans to argue on the grounds of freedom
of expression, opinion, peaceful assembly and association, claiming he
was singled out from the crowd because of his personal views.

"If they were going to charge me with trafficking, then everyone
should have been arrested," he said.

He also plans to argue that the passing of joints happened between
consenting adults.

Smith is the founder of Vancouver Island's Cannabis Buyers' Club, a
non-profit organization that provides medicinal marijuana to people
with chronic illnesses. The group runs out of Ted's Books, where proof
of illness and photo identification enable the purchase of medicinal
marijuana and the use of a smoking room.

Police raided Smith's store in 2002 up to six different times,
resulting in two different charges involving trafficking and
possession. Two of the seizures had been in response to robberies at
the store. Two others had been without warrants.

Judge Loretta F. Chaperon stayed these charges Sept. 7 on the grounds
the Cannabis Buyers' Club was doing the job the government was not
doing, namely providing a reliable supply of marijuana to those that
need it. The stay is expected to stick, making the ruling a victory
for Smith on its own.

Although there have been no additional arrests related to Hempology
101 since Smith's arrest, both campus security and Saanich police are
aware of its activities.

In an interview last year, Chris Horsley, spokesperson for the Saanich
police, said: "The police department is still very concerned with drug
use on campus. Just because the police aren't showing up every week
doesn't mean we are agreeing to what is happening."

"We made our point by charging him," said Hunter McDonald, former
director of campus security, in November 2003. According to McDonald,
campus security was waiting until the judicial system decides on
Smith's case before looking at future enforcement strategies regarding
marijuana.

This leaves only three charges with two separate trials to go. Despite
the delays and legal pitfalls, Hempology 101 has continued to increase
in size.

"People used to be cautious about coming to meetings, but at one point
last year we were getting 120 people to our meetings, right in the
middle of campus," said Smith in March 2004.

If that wasn't evidence enough of a growing interest in the
legalization of marijuana, Smith speaks every Wednesday at 7 p.m. on
the steps of the courthouse about his right to educate the public
about medical marijuana and his own recent trials. These meetings have
yet to be broken up by the Victoria police.

Smith's next trial will involve a charge laid in November 2000 - a
mere seven days after his arrest on campus - in front of the Greater
Victoria Public Library, where he was found distributing pot cookies
for a 4:20 meeting.

The trial is scheduled for Nov. 8. Smith said he intends to fight
right up to the Supreme Court itself, even if it takes another 10 years.

"The war on drugs is the epitome of a much larger, older struggle than
most people realize," Smith said in his book, Hempology 101. "It is
nothing less than a war on peace, a war on people."