NO TOKEN EFFORT

Marijuana Party Candidate Believes He Can Make A Difference In
Ottawa

Jim Wood can still remember the first time he did jail time for
trafficking in marijuana. It was 1991 and Wood was sentenced to six
months in the provincial penitentiary. Today, more than a decade
later, he still gets angry at the memory.

"I'm not a bad person," Wood said recently. "To put a 21-year old in
jail for 6-months and basically ruin his life.it is just
ridiculous."

Wood is the co-owner of the Cannabis Cafe on Canterbury Street. He's
also the official candidate in Saint John for the Marijuana Party, the
group of stoners who think Canada needs to lighten up on marijuana
use. Ours is a socially progressive nation but few things spark debate
like making pot legal.

Wood, who is 35 and the youngest on the ballot, admits the party is
focused on a single issue. But he thinks it's high time the government
ended the prohibition on marijuana use and he makes a compelling case.
Because Saint John is close to the U.S. border, the Port City would
benefit from the flood of Yankee dollars and government coffers would
get a lucrative source of revenue by taxing pot, just like it does
cigarettes and alcohol.

"We have a lot of American tourists just dying to come up here and try
our good Canadian pot. Why not sell it and tax it?" he said.

Wood's campaign comes shortly after his latest brush with the law.
This spring, city police raided the Cannabis Cafe, roughly eight
months after Jim and his wife Lynne made headlines by declaring they
would provide over the counter pot to people needing it.

At the time of the arrest they had about 150 regular clients and had
been mentioned in an article published by Rolling Stone.

More recently, city police raided a second office this month that the
couple had quietly opened uptown. Police arrested Lynne and she was
detained over night.

Lynne Wood will appear in court June 29, one day after the federal
election, to answer to charges arising from the arrests.

"Right now, we are going through the court proceedings and we intend
to win," Jim said.

The Martin Liberals have pledged to decriminalize the possession of
marijuana, but it's not a core issue in the campaign. The Marijuana
Party isn't likely to win any seats nationally and locally Wood must
run a campaign dominated by Conservative Bob McVicar and Liberal Paul
Zed.

When voters last went to the polls in 2000, Canadians gave the party
0.5 per cent of the national vote. Wood, who was running in the city
at the time, earned 461 votes or about 1 per cent of the local vote.

Pot remains an illegal drug in Canada. However, three years ago the
federal government amended the Narcotic Control Regulations Act to
allow for the possession of marijuana by people with a serious or
terminal illness. In Canada there are 734 persons allowed to possess
marijuana for medicinal purposes, including 11 in New Brunswick. There
are also 542 persons allowed to grow pot for medicinal purposes, most
of whom do so for their own use. But about 70 persons are designated
growers for someone else.

To Wood, this all adds up to a desire for the legalization of
marijuana. Recognized locally and nationally for his fight to legalize
marijuana, Woods is well positioned to capture a younger generation of
angry voters who feel that the prohibition on marijuana use is wrong.
To them, he offers a world of Dionysian indulgence.

Most Canadians agree that it's time Canada changed its marijuana laws
to possession as a crime punishable with a fine and few want the
country's youth facing criminal charges for something as innocent as
pot.

His party is not likely to get very far with the voters, though, who
don't feel strongly enough about their views to support a single-issue
party.

Nonetheless, he will court their support. "If somebody out there
believes in marijuana either for their own medicinal or recreational
reasons," Wood said, "just come out and vote for me. I'll make a big
difference."