POT ACTIVIST TAKES A HIT IN CANADA'S SUPREME COURT

There is now another reason to call it Canada's high court.

An activist seeking the overturn of Canada's marijuana law smoked hashish
and cannabis on Tuesday before arguing his own case in the Supreme Court,
dressed completely in hemp products.

"I took a couple hits off some bubble hash and a little bit of cannabis,"
David Malmo-Levine told reporters after delivering a 40-minute monologue to
the nine justices.

"I was happy, hungry and relaxed, but I was not impaired."

But his arguments seem to have fallen a little flat with the justices, who
will not rule for a number of months.

After having mercilessly grilled a lawyer arguing a companion case, they
declined to question Malmo-Levine despite his pleas to "hammer away" at him.

His arguments were nothing if not innovative, however.

He argued that just as the court had created a prohibition against
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, he should receive
similar constitutional protection on the basis of "substance orientation"
and "vocation orientation."

"A natural preference or taste for herbs is a substance orientation," said
the 31-year-old university dropout, sporting a black shirt, jacket, pants
and boots, white tie, and multicolored "hankie," all made from hemp.

"Why should not cannabis cafe operators receive vocation orientation
protection?"

He was charged in 1996 with possession of marijuana for the purposes of
trafficking, when police raided a "Harm Reduction Club" in Vancouver which
provided pot to its 1,800 members and which he helped run.

Appealing to the court to strike down the law, he said: "For the vast
section of people all over the world who have an innate feeling deep down
inside they should have a right to self-medicate and control their own
minds, you'll be heroes."

Ironically, Ottawa defended the law before the Supreme Court even though it
plans to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The chief federal lawyer arguing the case, David Frankel, said that even
under the proposed changes to the law, the government would keep criminal
penalties for possession of larger amounts of pot and for trafficking in
the substance.

Justice Charles Gonthier asked if the balancing of how harmful marijuana is
was not a political question.

Burstein responded that "there is an insufficient amount of harm to warrant
the very heavy hammer of the criminal law," and therefore courts should in
fact interfere.