POT ARREST HIKE WORRIES LAW EXPERTS

Court Case Overload Feared, Constitutional Questions Raised

TORONTO (CP) - Ottawa needs to fix long-standing loopholes and
inconsistencies in Canada's marijuana laws to help the justice system
contend with a surge of court cases resulting from the Conservative
government's new zeal for enforcement, legal experts say.

With witnesses reporting a dramatic increase in the number of
possession cases before the courts, those familiar with the
intricacies of the law say it remains vulnerable to the argument that
Canada's medicinal marijuana program renders it unconstitutional.

"Everytime a judge calls into question our marijuana laws, it
undercuts the legitimacy of the law," said Alan Young, a Osgoode Hall
law professor and veteran of the long-standing debate about
marijuana, its medicinal benefits and decriminalizing its possession.

Four years after Ottawa supposedly closed off a complex legal
loophole that effectively rendered the law unenforceable, an Ontario
Court judge agreed Friday that the law governing pot possession in
Canada was unconstitutional.

The Liberal government's decision in 2003 to allow eligible patients
access to marijuana for medicinal reasons was made by an informal
policy statement and never changed the existing statutes or
regulations, Lawyer Bryan McAllister argued.

"It is a departmental policy that can be changed at whim, or even
ignored," McAllister said in an interview.

"An aggrieved party cannot go to court to seek enforcement of a
government policy."

Without a clause that makes an exception for medicinal marijuana
users, "the policy is not enshrined in law, it has no value, and the
law as it stands is unconstitutional," McAllister said.

Ontario Court Justice Howard Borenstein agreed and dropped the
charges against Clifford Lond, 29, a Toronto resident who was charged
with possessing 3.5 grams of pot. Borenstein said he would wait two
weeks to make a formal ruling, giving public prosecutors time to file
an appeal.

Eric Nash, who has testified as an expert witness in a number of
cannabis cases across Canada, said the number of cases he has been
involved in has "tripled" in recent months.

"All of the sudden there seems to be a huge increase in the number of
marijuana possession cases going to court," Nash said.

That's because the number of people arrested for smoking pot rose
dramatically in several Canadian cities last year after the
Conservatives took office and killed Liberal legislation to
decriminalize small amounts of marijuana.

Preliminary figures suggested the number of arrests jumped by more
than one-third in several Canadian cities; Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa
and Halifax all reported increases of between 20 and 50 per cent in 2006.