CANADA COURT EASES MEDICAL MARIJUANA RULE

TORONTO -- An appeals court expanded the ability of patients to obtain medical
marijuana but affirmed that possession by non-patients remains a crime. The
decision Tuesday resolved a dilemma faced by the federal government: how to
follow a court order to enable patients to get marijuana for treatment while
also keeping the possession of pot by others illegal.

With a looming court-imposed deadline to create a supply system for patients,
the government in 2001 started registering qualified patients and authorizing
them or other designated people to grow pot for medicinal use. Several hundred
people have registered with the federal government to use marijuana for medical
purposes.

Subsequent court challenges invalidated marijuana possession laws so patients
could not be prosecuted for obtaining their medicinal pot. The government this
year also started supplying marijuana it grew in an underground mine shaft to
registered patients, but many complained about the quality of the pot and the
bureaucracy of the system.

On Tuesday, the Ontario Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional those
provisions in the federal Marijuana Medical Access Regulations restricting
licensed growers of medical marijuana from receiving compensation, from growing
the drug for more than one qualified patient and from pooling resources with
other licensed producers.

The ruling gives so-called compassion centers more leeway to grow and supply
medical marijuana.

Since the government medical marijuana program was now valid, the ruling said,
marijuana prohibition laws also were constitutionally valid.

"This narrow remedy would create a constitutionally valid medical exemption,
making marijuana prohibition ... immediately constitutionally valid and of full
force and effect and removing any uncertainty concerning the validity of the
prohibition," said a court synopsis of the ruling.

The ruling found that forcing patients to grow their own pot or break the law
by buying it on "the black market" was unfair.

Alan Young, a Toronto lawyer involved in marijuana decriminalization efforts,
said the ruling met the needs of medical marijuana users but hurt the
decriminalization effort.

"Politically, we lost a lot," Young said. "We won't be able to achieve
decriminalization by piggybacking on the deficiencies of the medical marijuana
program."

The United States opposes any liberalizing of Canadian marijuana laws, arguing
that would increase drug use and smuggling across the border.