POTHEAD RECKONS JAIL VIOLATES DRUG RIGHTS

Charter Argument Fails To Impress Judge

HALIFAX -- In an unusual legal case, a Nova Scotia judge ruled yesterday
that the rights of a man who uses marijuana to treat chronic pain would not
be violated if he were sent to prison and cut off from his steady supply of
the drug.

Michael Patriquen, 49, of Halifax failed to convince the Supreme Court
justice that she should delay sentencing him for drug trafficking so he
could argue in a special hearing that his charter rights would be trampled
if he were sent to a federal penitentiary and denied access to medicinal
marijuana.

Patriquen, who was convicted in 2000, received a federal exemption this
year to grow and possess a certain amount of the drug prescribed to him to
treat neck pain caused by a car accident three years ago.

His lawyer said he should not be sentenced until Ottawa can make legal
medicinal marijuana available to him while he serves a six-year sentence
for selling the drug in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

But Justice Suzanne Hood ruled that Patriquen's rights haven't been
violated because he has yet to begin serving his sentence. Only then, when
he is deprived of access to marijuana, could there be evidence proving his
rights had been denied.