JUST A PIPE DREAM

If Ottawa thinks the fight for medicinal marijuana is over, then there's a
lot more grass being grown on the Hill than any of us ever knew.

It's been another century since federal officials promised the sick and the
pained of this country a safe, secure and professional source of
prescription pot.

This is not an issue of recreational drug use -- no more than your
grandfather's heart medication.

It's about a fair shake for the sick, who've found relief in marijuana.
Last week, Ottawa delivered the first, very limited shipment of legally
approved medicinal marijuana to an HIV-infected Toronto man.

Jari Dvorak is one of only six people expected to receive the drug from
doctors for now.

Sealed in glossy packages with a red Maple Leaf on the front, the
medication is grown at an underground lab in Flin Flon, Man., under
contract to the federal government. Each 30-gram bag costs $150, which is
about $100 cheaper than buying from a street dealer.

The published photos of Dvorak taking his first toke -- he rated the drug a
five on a scale of one to 10 -- may have been enough to convince most
people the constant battle between hundreds of exemptees and Health Canada
had found an end. But Marc Paquette, and a large number of those Canadians
who have a legal right to take the drug, will argue otherwise.

Paquette, a 47-year-old Hawkesbury exemptee suffering from hepatitis C,
will appear before a three-judge panel this morning at the Federal Court of
Appeal in Ottawa. He'll be fighting Health Canada over how long his medical
marijuana exemptions last.

He received his first exemption on March 24, 2000, and has since had to
renew it 11 times.

"Why these people at Health Canada never gave us an exemption to last the
rest of our suffering days was, and still is, a total mystery to me," he says.

"They make us go through what no other sick Canadian citizen has to go
through."

The exemptees are nothing if not dogged in the constant fight to have
Ottawa live up to its promises.

Today will mark Paquette's 40th time heading to the courts to try to make
the doctor-approved medication easier to obtain for those most in need.

"I never thought this is how I'd be spending my days," says Paquette.

"I have worked full time for 21 years (with) no criminal record. I had over
$30,000 put aside for my good old days. (It's) all gone on the only
medication that my liver can tolerate -- marijuana -- court fees,
travelling expenses for courts, tests, specialists and all the running
around I had to go through because of Health Canada."

He's not alone in his frustration. Most exemptees haven't signed on for the
government approved marijuana because they'd have to give up their federal
licenses, enabling them to grow it themselves or possess it from other
sources. It would mean their only supply is what the government would give
- -- a product most are suspicious of.

"The one strain they're giving out is not going to help all of us with
different (ailments)," explains Alison Myrden, who suffers from multiple
sclerosis. She is one of a handful of medical marijuana exemptees who
helped persuade a judge to strike down the federal regulations governing
their use of the drug.

Yesterday, she was bedridden in her Burlington home, with only a small
amount of street-bought pot left.

She is aware that most Canadians believe medical exemptees have gotten what
they fought for.

But they haven't. Last year, Myrden, a former corrections officer, spent
$40,000 on black market pot. She's not confident the government offering
will dull her constant pain enough to surrender her licenses. And she can't
go to a drug store to buy it or charge it to her medical plan.

"It's a scary situation ... we're talking about medication that helps you
live," she says.

She is part of an ongoing Supreme Court action demanding more rights for
exemptees. It will likely not be her last action against Health Canada.

"I will continue to launch lawsuit after lawsuit until the government gets
it right," she says.

If Ottawa thought exemptees would just lay back after being offered a few
grams, it was all a pipe dream.