COURT UPHOLDS DRUG ACQUITTAL

Pot crusader Grant Kreiger's licence to grow won't be chopped down by
Alberta's top court.

A three-member Alberta Court of Appeal panel yesterday upheld Kreiger's
acquittal on a charge of cultivating a narcotic.

The appeal judges agreed with a lower-court ruling that the federal
government's exemption to pot possession was "an absurdity because
there was no legal source of marijuana."

But the high court overturned Kreiger's acquittal on a charge of
possession of the drug for the purpose of trafficking.

Justice Peter Costigan, in handing down the unanimous decision, said
the trial judge erred in her explanation of the defence of necessity to
the jurors, who found Kreiger not guilty.

Costigan said Queen's Bench Justice Darlene Acton was right when she
ruled Kreiger didn't have to apply for an exemption to simply possess
marijuana for his own use.

Crown prosecutor Scott Couper argued that Acton erred when she ruled that
the cultivation law deprived Kreiger -- who suffers from multiple sclerosis
- -- the right to his medicine of choice.

"The evidence clearly disclosed a number of alternatives," he said.