OTTAWA TO APPEAL RULING AGAINST POT LAWS

Ottawa is appealing a ruling that found Canada's marijuana-possession laws
are no longer valid.

In a notice filed yesterday, the Crown says it will try to show that an
Ontario judge erred when he concluded that a 16-year-old broke no laws when
he was caught carrying five grams of marijuana last spring.

Jim Leising, director of the Justice Department's prosecution service in
Ontario, announced the decision to appeal yesterday, one day after Judge
Douglas Phillips in Windsor dismissed possession charges against the teenager.

Judge Phillips agreed with the defence that a previous court decision
rendered the laws against marijuana possession invalid.

An appeal is a matter of some urgency for the Justice Department; the
validity of a marijuana law which many people are accused of breaking is an
open question.

Brian McAllister, the teenager's lawyer, said the case he won on Thursday
leaves Ontario's legal system in a quandary. "I don't see why any judge
would want to hear any other cases involving the issue until this appeal
has been adjudicated."

A judge in the Ontario Superior Court in Windsor will hear the appeal,
likely within a few weeks.

The confusion created by the teenager's case has its roots in a ruling made
two years ago.

In July, 2000, an Ontario Court of Appeal judge ruled that Canada's
marijuana-possession laws are unconstitutional because they do not allow
chronically ill people access to a substance that could lessen their suffering.

Though the ruling, in effect, struck down the possession law, the judge
explicitly delayed its effect for one year. The hope was that Ottawa could
come up with a more compassionate scheme in the interim.

The federal cabinet responded with new rules, but they may not be
sufficient. The judge in the teenager's case ruled this week that the
appeal court had called for nothing less than new laws passed by
Parliament, and that regulations issued by cabinet do not carry enough weight.

Judge Phillips ruled that because the underlying constitutional issue was
never properly addressed, the possession laws remained invalid regardless
of whether the person caught with cannabis was using it for medicinal or
recreational purposes.