POT PARTY PLANS PROTEST AT SCHOOL

The Manitoba Cannabis Party plans to demonstrate at Kelvin High School
today in support of nine teens charged with drug dealing last year.

"I'm sick and tired of one-sided stories being told that drugs are evil,"
party spokesman Chris Buors told The Sun yesterday. "I don't see drug
dealers as evil people, I see them as persecuted people."

Police and school officials said they won't interfere with the
demonstration so long as it stays off school grounds. But they dispute the
message the pro-dope party plans to give.

"Kelvin doesn't persecute drug-using kids by calling the police, they refer
them to Addictions Foundation of Manitoba," said Vice Insp. Stan Tataryn.
"So I don't know where this group is coming from on that one."

Ecstasy, Marijuana Sold

Last November, nine students at Kelvin were charged with trafficking after
an undercover female police officer was sold ecstasy and marijuana.

Winnipeg School Division chairwoman Liz Ambrose said police were asked to
intervene at Kelvin because the situation went beyond school official's
control.

"The school was not coming down on the students for drug usage," said
Ambrose. "The police were called in for the selling of the drugs in the
school."

Ambrose said the division doesn't see the nine teens as evil, but they made
an error in judgment. The demonstrators said they will hand out leaflets to
students at lunch-hour and after school today. Tataryn said he hopes the
students ignore their message.

"It bothers me somewhat that they are dealing with an impressionable age
group," said Tataryn. "I just hope they won't take them too seriously."