BATTLE CONTINUES ON CANNABIS

Philippe Lucas of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society hopes 2004 bodes
better for medicinal marijuana users than the past 12 months.

Just as Lucas was making a list of the top five most grievous events for
medicinal cannabis users in 2003, a Supreme Court challenge arguing that
criminalizing pot is unconstitutional failed at the end of December.

Lucas, the longtime Victoria advocate for medical cannabis, is getting a
bit jaded about what he calls the "dysfunctional medical marijuana program"
and says he wasn't surprised with the latest decision.

"There were quite a few setbacks this year," he says.

Topping his worst-five list was Health Canada's continuing failure to
distribute medicinal cannabis despite an Ontario court order to do so.

In contrast, the recent Supreme Court decision did not deal directly with
medicinal marijuana use, challenging instead the laws against recreational
use. Had it succeeded, says Lucas, the hassle of getting medicinal
marijuana -- which remains legal to use but not buy -- would have been solved.

The decade-long case involved three B.C. men who were convicted of
possessing pot and had appealed their cases all the way to the Supreme
Court. With help from the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), they
argued that jailing someone for a harmless activity violates the Charter of
Rights.

Six of the nine judges didn't buy that Canadians have a constitutional
right to smoke pot.

In the ruling, the judges acknowledged that risks of marijuana use were
small for casual users but large enough for chronic users (estimated to be
50,000 in Canada), schizophrenics and pregnant women.

The BCCLA was quick to note that the judges didn't say criminalizing pot
was a good idea, just that it was the government's prerogative to make it
illegal.

"The court felt that our constitution does not require parliament to prove
that an activity causes harm before it prohibits that conduct," says BCCLA
policy director Kirk Tousaw.

Lucas agrees: "Basically what the Supreme Court decided is that the state
has the right to criminalize anything that it wants to. It's too bad, I
mean they could decide to criminalize growing roses because people are
stinging themselves on the thorns."

For this year, Lucas is focusing his own efforts to loosen Canada's laws on
marijuana possession in the field of research.

Ironically, given that pregnant women were cited as a group of concern in
the court decision, one of Lucas's projects is looking into the effects of
marijuana on extreme morning sickness.

The Vancouver Island Compassion Society is working with researchers from
UVic and UBC to find relief for pregnant women whose nausea is so extreme
that the fetus can be damaged from the violence of vomiting.

"In some cases, something like cannabis that can help with the nausea and
vomiting might be a better alternative than some of the pharmaceutical
alternatives that are available," Lucas says.

One encouraging sign with Prime Minister Paul Martin's shuffling of the
cabinet deck, says Lucas, is the change of federal health minister.

"I hope that our new health minister (Pierre Pettigrew), is more receptive
than his predecessor (Anne McLellan)," he says.

Lucas says he hopes that in setting policy on the marijuana issue,
Pettigrew -- former minister for international cooperation and a onetime
committee director for NATO in Brussels -- will be influenced by his
international experiences.