BIZARRE DRUG POLICY EXPOSES JUSTICE SYSTEM TO RIDICULE

Could any drug-induced hallucination ever be quite so bizarre as the
medical marijuana policy which has been cooked up by Canada's legal
establishment? That would be quite a stretch.

To be sure, there is at least some measure of good intention in the
current law. Justice Minister Allan Rock has championed provisions to
allow gravely ill persons, with the approval of their doctors, to
consume marijuana for relief of their chronic conditions, when all
other remedies have failed.

However, even after patients have jumped through all the hoops to
obtain legal permission to use marijuana, there is still the problem
of where to obtain the herb. After all, only a minority of affected
patients (or "exemptees") have either the health or the resources to
grow their own gardens.

In a reasonable world, that wouldn't be much of a problem. There are
thousands of gardeners across the nation who could quite capably
produce crops of quality marijuana, which grows quite readily in the
temperate zones of Canada. The supply crisis for medical marijuana is
highly unnatural, resulting simply from archaic laws which make
growing the herb a criminal offence.

The federal response to this law-induced problem breaks new ground in
the annals of government-sponsored inanities. Our tax dollars are now
being used to grow marijuana, not in private citizens' gardens or
greenhouses, but deep underground, in a mine shaft, in northern
Manitoba. Until this crop is ready, most exemptees have no legal
source of the medicine to which they are legally entitled.

This national absurdity was echoed on a local level this week, when
medical marijuana exemptees appeared in a Cobourg court. They had all
been expecting to receive marijuana from Cramahe Township grower
Dianne Bruce. After Bruce was arrested, and her crop seized, some
exemptees petitioned the courts to return their portion of the
medicine.

At the end of a long day at the Cobourg court house on Monday,
Justice Rhys Morgan took just a few minutes to dismiss the hopes of
the long-suffering people before him. Morgan stated that the
marijuana could not be released, because it is needed as evidence
when Bruce's case eventually makes its way through the court dockets.

Evidence? Bruce had made it known to the police early last summer
that she was growing marijuana, inviting officers to inspect her
well-fenced garden. No one needs any further evidence that marijuana
was being grown there. But we dearly need some evidence that our
courts are capable of rational thinking, when it comes to
implementing the supposedly compassionate policy on medical marijuana.