POT CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST MEDICINAL POT DISTRIBUTORS

The Compassion Club Raided In August Of 2002

The Compassion Club on Bathurst St. near St. Clair Ave. where
marijuana was distributed to ailing users could be open for business
again.

The Toronto Compassion Club, a small, store-front space where
marijuana was distributed to pot smokers who said they needed the drug
for medicinal purposes could be re-opening after trafficking charges
against its founders were dropped.

The federal justice department announced Jan. 28, 17 months after the
club was raided, that it wouldn't proceed with drug trafficking
charges laid by Toronto police against its two founders.

In August of 2002, police raided the club where volunteers were
growing and distributing marijuana to more than 1,200 users, all of
whom had doctor's prescriptions for the drug. Recently, it became
legal for patients with diseases like glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and
epilepsy to possess marijuana.

The charges against founders Warren Hitzig and Zack Naftolin were
dropped the day before they were supposed to go ahead with a
preliminary hearing into possession and trafficking charges.

However, with Hitzig, Naftolin and their supporters cheering on the
steps of Toronto's Old City Hall, officials with the justice
department said it's possible the charges could be re-laid.

The case was seen as a litmus test for new legislation that allowed
for some seriously ill patients to smoke marijuana while other laws
still made it illegal for them to purchase it.

While the federal government began to consider licensing growers,
police were cracking down on still-illegal producers and distributors.
A Court of Appeal ruling later recognized storefront locations like
the Companion Centre, but police still laid charges.

Alan Young, a lawyer who helped set up the Toronto Compassion Centre
and a professor at Osgoode Hall, was correct when he predicted last
year the Crown might not drop the charges until mere days before a
preliminary hearing.

Young expects Toronto police simply won't drop the charges of drug
possession and drug trafficking against the members before they force
a full trial sometime next year.

He speculates the charges were laid as a sort of political retribution
against the club for its involvement in a lawsuit against the Canadian
government over laws governing the sale and use of marijuana for
medical purposes.

"Despite the fact that marijuana, as a medicinal therapeutic agent has
gained renewed understanding and acceptability and understanding,
there's just no infrastructure in place for its distribution because
we also have, concurrently, a criminal prohibition," he said.

Young said the actual club has been operating and flourishing in a new
location in the city's east end, but that both Hitzig and Naftolin
weren't involved in it because the conditions of their release
prohibited it.

"I get asked what this all means for clubs, I say that I don't know. I
think this means this appears to be some sort of permission - but
there are two clubs in Toronto that are doing very well," he said.

An experimental program of the federal government that sees pot grown
in an abandoned copper mine in Flin Flon, Man., has yet to ship any
marijuana to those with doctor's prescriptions. Government officials
say the product still needs to be tested for quality and potency.

The club, which has openly distributed marijuana (or "medicine" as
club members call it) for years, has operated at arm's length from
police, who regularly kept tabs on the operation.