POT APPEAL DROPPED IN N.S. COURTS

Jailed Sackville Man To Fight In Federal Court For Medicinal Use

A federal inmate suffering rapid weight loss and chronic pain is no longer
appealing a judge's refusal to hear arguments on his right to smoke pot
behind bars.

"I hereby give notice, that I, Michael Ronald Patriquen, the appellant,
abandon the appeal herein," Mr. Patriquen wrote in a brief document filed
at the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal. The appeal was to be heard April 1.

In an interview Tuesday 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 opened for him to fight in the Federal Court of Canada.

Mr. Patriquen of Middle Sackville 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 this province and in
Newfoundland in 1999 and 2000.

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

Mr. 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, Mr. 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, Mr. 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.

"I can't really can't take going around in pain and being weak and sick
much longer."

Mr. Patriquen has been offered the pill form of THC, one of the active
ingredients in marijuana, a Correctional Service Canada official said Tuesday.

"There is still no legal supply (of marijuana) available and (the service)
has not changed (its) position regarding that," spokeswoman Lynn Chaplin
said Tuesday.

On advice of other doctors, Mr. Patriquen said he has refused the THC
because it's not for pain control but is "something that's indicated for
vomiting for people undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy."

Mr. Patriquen also said a prison doctor has recently offered him opiates,
an epilepsy drug and another chemotherapy drug.

"I told them that I didn't want a drug problem on top of everything else,"
he said of the opiates. "They're highly addictive."

In December 2000, Ottawa awarded Prairie Plant Systems, a Saskatoon
company, a five-year, $5-million federal contract to grow marijuana to
provide Health Canada with a reliable source of the drug to meet the
country's medical and research needs.

The marijuana is being grown underground in an old mine in Manitoba.