POT PLANTS RETURNED TO CARLISLE DEAD

A local medical marijuana licensee finally got his marijuana plants back
from police after they were seized from a Hope shed almost two summers ago.
The remains of 51 once-bushy pot plants were picked up by Brian Carlisle
Friday afternoon at the Hope RCMP detachment. The founder of the Holy Smoke
Healing Centre holds up brown, brittle stems taken from the taped-up
evidence bag, to show in which state they were returned, along with some
grow equipment and paraphernalia. "It's a joke," he says, about the return
of dead plants.

He says he's the first B.C. resident to ever to have confiscated marijuana
returned. Staff Sgt. Jim Delnea says "no efforts" were made by police
officials to keep plants alive while the wheels of justice turned. "When we
seize plants, normally they will just dry out or decompose," he adds. "I
think the issue here is that we are honouring a Supreme Court order to have
the seized items returned.

That is what we have done." Asked if any of the recent developments might
affect police practice in the future, he replied, "We'll continue to do our
investigations and if the law is broken, we will forward our
recommendations for any charges to the Crown." Mr. Carlisle says he had
been hoping against hope that RCMP had kept the plants alive or at least be
able to return it in smokeable form, dried and in containers, the way
Sechelt RCMP did for U.S. marijuana refugee Steve Kubby. "What they did was
to return samples containing some of the dried material, representing a
small proportion of the marijuana plants that were originally seized,"
confirms Mr. Kubby's wife, Michele Kubby, over the phone Monday. "But it
was a miracle we got back as much as we did. The RCMP shook our hands and
said 'We are here for you.' "We believe if there's any question that a grow
might be for medicine, police should cordon it off and protect the garden
and then work it out later in the courts. "The plants need to be kept alive.

It takes three months to get a garden up and going again and sick people
can't wait," Ms. Kubby adds. Mr. Carlisle is eager to seek restitution for
the cost of his meds. "I can't wait to get back in court to get justice on
April 28. This does not feel like justice," he says. The medical pot user
was "relentless" in his pursuit to have his property returned, especially
after a Supreme Court Judge ruled in January the plants and equipment
seized by police in July 2001 had to be returned. The second part of Mr.
Carlisle's legal strategy is to return to court in late April in an attempt
to get reimbursed for the $90,000 estimated total he had to spend buying
marijuana to counteract the effects of glaucoma, Hep C and chronic pain.
Continued: POT/ page xx

He says he has to medicate himself with one to two ounces of bud per day,
and he's had to travel to Vancouver to get his medicine, "all because
police wrongfully seized my plants and equipment." Because of what he
believes is a legal precedent created by Judge Linda Loo's ruling, "other
patients in B.C. are now calling their local detachments to get their meds
back." Hope's Crown counsel initially tried to get the return of the plants
put off indefinitely, arguing the court didn't have the jurisdiction, but
the judge ruled in the licensee's favour nonetheless. Mr. Carlisle applied
for a licence to grow medicinal pot in 1999, and finally received the
much-ballyhooed Health Canada approval to grow or possess more than 1,800
grams on Sept. 9, 2002.