DON'T THROW OUT FEDERAL POT LAWS, LAWYER WARNS

Regulations Ensure MDs, Not Patients, Govern Medical Use Of Cannabis, Court
Told

TORONTO -- Throwing out Ottawa's regulations on medical use of marijuana
would lead to a tidal wave of demand to treat "everything from warts to
hemorrhoids," a Justice Department lawyer warned in Ontario Superior Court
yesterday.

Fighting a court bid by patients who want easier access to a drug they say
helps them, lawyer Harvey Frankel said the regulations ensure that doctors,
not patients, decide who gets an exemption from federal laws banning
marijuana possession.

"If it's to be left solely to the discretion of people who stand up and
say, 'I use marijuana for medical purposes,' that's anyone and everyone,"
Mr. Frankel said. "There's going to be something wrong with everybody.
[For] any ailment known to mankind, someone's claimed marijuana is good for
it."

The government is opposing a court application by several sick Canadians
who want access to legally grown marijuana without going through the
bureaucratic process involved.

The HIV, cancer, hepatitis and multiple sclerosis patients, along with the
Toronto Compassion Centre, which supplies illicit marijuana to 1,200
people, say Ottawa's medical marijuana access regulations are "a
constitutionally deficient regime that operate as an illusory exemption."

They have told the court that doctors are reluctant to write marijuana
prescriptions and that patients object to providing their names, addresses
and photographs to the government to obtain exemption cards.

They want Mr. Justice Sidney Lederman to order Ottawa to resurrect a
shelved plan to make marijuana, grown under government auspices in a mine
shaft in Flin Flon, Man., available to medical users.

Mr. Frankel told the judge that it is not the courts' place to order
governments to do anything; they can only tell them what not to do.

Besides, the amount of marijuana in the mine would meet the demand for less
than one week, he said.

Quoting figures provided by Brent Zettl, president of Prairie Plant
Systems, he said 200 kilograms of marijuana has been harvested in Flin Flon.

The Compassion Club serves 1,200 people in Toronto, and the average medical
user smokes five grams a day, Mr. Frankel said. Canada's population is 10
times that of Toronto, but even if the national demand is only five times
that of Toronto the result would be 6,000 people smoking five grams a day,
30 kilograms a day in total.

Since Parliament introduced the regulations in July, 2001, 565 people have
applied for medical exemptions to the laws against marijuana possession and
343 exemptions have been granted, the lawyer said.

The remaining 222 have not been completed because of missing information or
photographs, not because of the absence of doctors' signatures, Mr. Frankel
said.

The regulations were the government's response to an Ontario Court of
Appeal ruling in 2000 that found the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act
discriminated against sick people who benefit from marijuana use.