CANADIAN APPEALS COURT EASES MEDICAL MARIJUANA SUPPLY, AFFIRMS LAW AGAINST
POSSESSION

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.