MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO POT-BY-POST PLAN

Plea Crafted to Protect Grower's Licence

A medical marijuana crusader accused of mailing pot to fellow users
in the United States and Britain pleaded guilty yesterday to
committing mischief by using Canada Post services "without proper authority."

Following Marco Renda's plea, federal prosecutor David Doney asked
the court to withdraw three counts each of trafficking and exporting
a controlled substance and a single count of possession of a
controlled substance.

Justice Walter Gonet gave Renda, 47, formerly of the Mount Forest
area, a conditional discharge and put the man on probation for two years.

Outside court, Renda's lawyer, Leora Shemesh, said the plea was
carefully crafted to protect her client's Health Canada licence,
which allows Renda to possess and grow marijuana.

He uses the drug to alleviate the symptoms of hepatitis C.

Shemesh said if Renda had pleaded guilty to any drug-related counts
it could have cost him his federal exemption from marijuana laws.

"The court was compassionate with that and so was the Crown," Shemesh
said, noting the plea to mischief was hammered out between the judge
and lawyers for both sides during a series of pretrial meetings.

"His honour was aware of not wanting to affect his licence," Shemesh
said. "It was a compassionate resolution."

Renda was accused of mailing 43 packages of marijuana to people in
the U.S. and United Kingdom during March 2005.

He was arrested April 13, 2005, when members of the Ontario
Provincial Police's drug enforcement section executed a warrant at
his home in Southgate Township, northeast of Mount Forest.

In entering his plea yesterday, Renda admitted only that he used the
postal service to send out "plant materials."

Shemesh said as well as the compassionate reasons to conclude the
case, the Crown might have had difficulty proving its case because of
"continuity issues" surrounding Canada Post's handling of the
packages, including who had authority to open them.

Renda has since moved to Toronto, where he publishes Treating
Yourself magazine, billed as "a journal for patients by patients."

He said the resolution of the charges "gives me some breathing room
to get back to what I was doing, which is educating the uninformed to
the value of medical marijuana."

Renda said he also intends to give away marijuana seeds through his
website (treatingyourself.com) and to continue lobbying Health Canada
to provide free marijuana to those who qualify to legally possess it.

The federal government pays Prairie Plant Systems to grow marijuana
in an old mine shaft in Flin Flon, Man., which is then provided, at a
cost, to exempted people.