POT APPEAL GIVEN UP

HALIFAX -- A federal inmate suffering rapid weight loss and chronic pain is
no longer appealing one judge's refusal to hear arguments on his right to
smoke pot behind bars, but he may try another court.

"I hereby give notice, that I, Michael Ronald Patriquen, the appellant,
abandon the appeal herein," Patriquen wrote in a brief document filed at
the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal.

The appeal was to have been heard April 1.

In an interview yesterday from Westmorland Institution in New Brunswick,
the Nova Scotia Marijuana Party founder said that since Corrections Canada
has forbidden him from accessing his legally prescribed marijuana while in
prison, the door has now opened for him to fight in the Federal Court of
Canada.

Patriquen, of Middle Sackville, N.S., has hired British Columbia lawyer
John Conroy, an expert in cannabis law and penal law.

He is serving six years in prison for conspiring to possess marijuana in
Nova Scotia and conspiring to traffic in marijuana in Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland in 1999 and 2000.

Last September, Justice Suzanne Hood of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruled
that she had no jurisdiction to hear his arguments because it is a civil
court matter.

Patriquen suffered from chronic neck pain as a result of a 1999 car
accident and is among a select group of Canadians licensed to use marijuana
for medicinal purposes.

Armed with two federal licences to grow and smoke marijuana, Patriquen
inhaled up to five grams of pot daily before he was jailed.

Without the joints, he said he's wasting away with nausea from untreated pain.

"This has been going on for six months and I'm very weak from it," he said.

"As of (Monday), I had lost 39 pounds because of my inability to eat since
the time of my sentencing on Sept. 10."

At sentencing, Patriquen weighed 202 pounds. But now he says he feels like
a cripple.

"I'm hoping I'll be given access to my medicine so I don't die, because I
really don't have a lot of weight left to lose," he said.