CANADA IS MEDICAL MARIJUANA MECCA

Many Americans Are Fleeing The Bush Administration's Crackdown On The Clubs
That Say They Provide Pot To Sick People.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia Four decades ago, a wave of American draft
dodgers fled to Canada rather than fight in Vietnam. Some turned to
planting marijuana seeds to make a living and spurred an underground
industry that is now booming across British Columbia.

Over the last year or so, a new generation of Americans has flocked into
western Canada, fleeing the Bush administration's crackdown on the clubs
that say they provide marijuana to sick people, particularly in California.

A handful who face drug charges and convictions in the United States have
applied for political asylum. Hundreds more American marijuana smokers live
underground existences here, local marijuana advocates say.

Canada is in the awkward position in which it either must stand up to the
United States - and encourage more refugees and asylum applications - or
evict people who say they suffer from cancer and other deadly diseases.

While general use of marijuana is illegal in both countries, Canada has
been far more tolerant of its use for medical purposes.

"It's an exodus," said Renee Boje, 32, a California fugitive from drug
charges who has applied for refugee status. "Canada has a history of
protecting the American people from its own government like during the
Vietnam War, and the Underground Railroad that protected American runaway
slaves."

Most of the Americans here do not face charges at home, marijuana advocates
say, but came because they can get the drug more cheaply and easily here
now since the American clubs were shut down. "Compassion clubs" thrive in
several Canadian communities to serve what they say are the medical needs
of severe-pain sufferers.

"In the last year the number of Americans coming and intending to stay has
skyrocketed," said Marc Emery, president of the B.C. Marijuana Party, who
provides legal aid to the Americans. He estimated that the number of recent
arrivals was "in the hundreds."

Some of them work on farms, living a countercultural life not very
different from that of the previous generation of American refugees. Others
are living on the street, or moving from couch to couch in homes of
Canadian marijuana users. Some have gone into businesses like
herbal-medicine stores or they work in marijuana cultivation.

To Bush administration officials, the American fugitives are simply
lawbreakers.

"It's regrettable that people who are charged with criminal offenses in the
United States don't face justice here and put a burden on another country,"
said John Walters, President George W. Bush's drug policy chief.

He said there was no evidence that smoking marijuana was an effective
medicine, and that the agenda of many who argue for medicinal marijuana is
to legalize drugs.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Drug Enforcement Administration
director, Asa Hutchinson, have stiffened enforcement against marijuana
clubs that had grown around California after an initiative called
Proposition 215 passed in 1996, making marijuana legal for treating some
sick people. Asserting the superiority of federal anti-drug laws, federal
agencies have raided some clubs, and others have closed or gone underground.

Steven W. Tuck, 35, a disabled veteran of the Army, fled to Canada
pretending he was going fishing after his club was repeatedly raided, and
he faced drug charges. He was arrested for overstaying his visa and,
fearing deportation, sought refugee status.

Sitting recently in Vancouver's Amsterdam Cafe, where smoking marijuana is
allowed, he was sweating and shaking while awaiting a friend who had gone
out to buy some. "I have to have marijuana to stay alive," said Tuck, who
said his torment began in 1987 with an Army parachuting accident that
caused spinal and brain injuries.

If he is sent home and denied marijuana, Tuck says, he fears he will die
"choking on my vomit in jail."

The Canadian Justice Ministry will not discuss refugee cases. To grant
asylum, Canada would have to determine that the Americans would face
unwarranted persecution at home.

The cases come at a time when the Cabinet and Parliament are discussing
whether to decriminalize marijuana, with many Canadians arguing that U.S.
attitudes are overly restrictive. (On Sept. 4, a Canadian Senate committee
recommended that the country legalize marijuana use for people over 16.)

There is also a Cabinet debate over whether the government should provide
marijuana to chronically ill Canadians or conduct clinical trials first.

"We can't base our policy on social issues like this on American standards,
especially in an area where they're very conservative," said Industry
Minister Allan Rock, a former health minister who believes that chronically
ill patients should have access to quality-controlled marijuana.

The most prominent American fugitive here is Steve Kubby, 55, the
Libertarian Party candidate for governor of California in 1998. He and his
wife, Michele, have an Internet news program on marijuana issues.

They fled California last year for the rural British Columbia town of
Sechelt after the police found 265 marijuana plants, a mushroom stem and
some peyote buttons in their house. Kubby had been sentenced to four months
of house arrest and three months of probation, which he feared might
eventually lead to a prison term in which he would be denied the marijuana
that he says he needs to treat his adrenal cancer.

"If I don't smoke pot," he said, "my blood pressure goes through the roof
and would either burst a blood vessel or cause a heart attack."

He appealed his sentence, then brought his family to Canada. He was
arrested here, and he could be deported.

Meanwhile, he applied for permission to cultivate and possess marijuana for
his own medical use. He provided Canadian authorities with a letter from a
University of British Columbia doctor who substantiated his need "to
continue to use cannabis to control the symptoms caused by his disease."

The government recently granted him the right to grow and possess a limited
amount for a year, which advocates viewed as a major victory.

"It's threatening to the whole ideology of prohibition," Kubby said, "which
says any marijuana use is criminal."