YORK PROFESSOR: CANNABIS CRUSADER

The summer of love has now turned into the autumn of hate, now that this
month's court ruling has illegalized possession of small amounts of
marijuana again. Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young is representing a
small handful of patients and has been advocating for easier access to
marijuana for medical purposes since 1998.

In January of this year he challenged the Medical Marijuana Access
Regulations (MMRA), claiming that they were constitutionally flawed and made
no lawful source of marijuana available to people who require the drug for
medical purposes.

The MMRA was established in 2000 by the federal government as a framework to
regulate the use of marijuana for people who are suffering from serious
illnesses.

Based on the January hearing, the Ontario Supreme Court ordered the federal
government to provide a legal source and supply of marijuana for medical
purposes, giving them six months to do so.

According to Young, six months passed and "nothing changed", and so Young's
clients filed a civil lawsuit in May against Health Canada. On October 7,
the courts made the decision to remove four of the MMRA's restrictions,
making the regulations constitutional. This decision also made the
possession of small amounts of pot illegal again.

Though the ruling now makes the MMRA constitutional, Young argues that it is
not improving accessibility because medicinal marijuana is still difficult
and expensive to acquire, forcing sick people to buy it on the black market.
He cites that some of the people he represents spend tens of thousands of
dollars a year on marijuana.

"This decision . gives us a lot of ammunition to fight with government over,
in terms of improving the [MMRA]," says Young.

He explains that with this ruling, his next step is to bring in corporate
involvement in order find cheaper marijuana and gain access to a greater
variety of strains. "We have had modest success with no resources. So now I
want to see what we can achieve when the corporate world gets behind us to
sponsor what I consider to be this important activity," says Young, who adds
that although he does not like the corporate world, "the bottom line is
corporations build hospitals."

Young says that over the past three months he has been approached by the
private sector, and has plans to establish a warehouse to grow thousands of
pot plants.

"The reality is, if [someone] comes to me and says you know what, we want to
help and we can offer resources, I made an agreement that says I will only
assist you if you promise me to offer the product at a certain low price,"
says Young.

With this month's court ruling, some York students support use of marijuana
for medical purposes.

"I think it should be available for medical reasons," says Atkinson human
resources student Nelia Cabral. "I think that they should focus more on the
drug traffickers, not so much marijuana but other more hardcore drugs."

First year communications major Kevin Yoo agrees.

"Medical marijuana should be legalized because other substances that are
more harmful to the body, like tobacco and alcohol, are perfectly legal,"
says Yoo. "You should either legalize both of them or ban both of them, and
since Canada is very liberal, they should legalize both of them."

- - With files from Aaron Levy