COMPASSION SOCIETY CHALLENGES POT BUST

To the prosecution, it's a simple case of production for the purposes
of trafficking, involving two local men caught red-handed growing a
crop of 900 marijuana plants on an acreage in East Sooke.

To Vancouver Island Compassion Society founder Philippe Lucas, it's a
constitutional challenge of Canada's medical marijuana laws.

Lawyers were in court in Victoria this week arguing that the two men
arrested in the May 2004 raid, Mat Beren and Michael Swallow, were
operating a marijuana research and cultivation facility on behalf of
the society.

"We don't deny what we were doing," Lucas said. "Our defence is a
constitutional challenge."

The compassion society's lawyers will argue that Health Canada's
medical cannabis program has failed to abide by recent court rulings
ordering the government to make pot available for medical purposes,
Lucas said.

The society accuses Health Canada of restricting access to the
program, placing arbitrary limits on pot production and "supplying an
inadequate source of cannabis."

The government began growing medical marijuana in 2000, but users soon
began to complain about the quality of the product.

Two years later, Freedom of Information documents obtained by the
advocacy group Canadians for Safe Access revealed that nearly
one-third of people who bought pot from Health Canada returned their
government-grown cannabis.

Lucas said a verdict in the compassion society's favour could force a
major overhaul of Canada's medical cannabis program and potentially
lead to the legalization of the community-based distribution of cannabis.

"It's really a problem with the program that it limits single
individuals from growing cannabis," he said.

The trial of Mat Beren and Michael Swallow started Wednesday and is
expected to continue through May 18.

The defence witness list includes Conservative Senator Pierre-Claude
Nolin, chair of the senate special committee on illegal drugs.