Cannabis News Protecting Patients Access to Medical Marijuana
  Time To Take The High Road
Posted by FoM on June 24, 2001 at 14:21:26 PT
By Licia Corbella, Editor of the Calgary Sun 
Source: Calgary Sun 

medical For almost a decade now, the federal government has been mulling and musing over the idea of legalizing the use of medicinal marijuana.

So what does all of that high-priced help in Ottawa come up with to alleviate the pain of terminally ill patients, never mind the public pressure to help those in need? It comes up with a law that is, when thought out and practised, an absurdity.

Essentially, the federal Liberals came up with what's now called a Section 56 exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which gives those people who successfully apply the right to possess marijuana to help alleviate the symptoms of their illness.

We're talking about really nasty sicknesses, like Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Hepatitis C, AIDS and cancer.

The big problem, of course, is that once those who are deemed sick enough receive their exemption, they have no legal means of getting the marijuana.

To get their medicine, they must, in effect, break the law and they often must meet with unscrupulous drug dealers to do so.

For Grant Cluff, who has always been a law-abiding type of fellow, breaking the law is something he now sees as a necessity.

Cluff, 53, suffers from Multiple Sclerosis -- a degenerative and painful disease that can lead to paralysis.

He was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 40 and continued teaching as long as he could. Eventually, he was forced to retire from his job as a high-school teacher.

Now he says he's not bothered one bit about breaking the law by buying marijuana from a third party because he knows that no jury in this land would be calloused enough to deny him the only medicine that gives him any quality of life.

His wife, Eunice, 49, whom he describes "as the most straight-laced person you'd ever meet," is 100% behind her husband's "illegal activity."

After all, she has seen her husband confined to a wheelchair and cry out in excruciating pain from the spasms that wracked his body before he got turned on to cannabis.

This past Wednesday, Cluff showed up in room 303 at the Court of Queen's Bench in Calgary to show his support for a man who has helped ease his pain.

Grant Krieger was facing charges of possession of marijuana for the purposes of trafficking. A jury of 11 women and one man found Krieger - -- who openly admitted to growing marijuana and selling it to sick people -- not guilty of the charge.

It is a ground-breaking ruling because, while Krieger's lawyer Adriano Iovinelli threw up the defence of necessity in the court convincingly, later, after the not guilty verdict was handed down, he said that the jury performed a kind of balancing act between what the laws say and their consciences.

"Cases like this with people like Grant Krieger are very difficult for any jury," said Iovinelli. "They're dealing with what they're feeling in their hearts is the right thing to do and what the law in Canada says."

Interesting, isn't it, that 12 unpaid jurors can spend two days in trial and seven hours in deliberation and do the right thing and we have 301 highly paid members of Parliament, a justice department with dozens of even-more highly paid lawyers working in it and still no relief in sight for legitimate cannabis users like Krieger and Cluff?

It is believed the Crown will appeal the decision and hundreds of thousands more dollars will be thrown away fighting a law that is immoral.

The arrogance behind the idea that someone should just suffer in pain rather than take a relatively benign herb, just because society has too many hang-ups with it, is really maddening.

The time has come for the federal government to allow people like Krieger to legitimately supply marijuana to people like Cluff and his other patients by establishing large, non-profit grow operations.

Cluff says before he met Krieger he was feeling desperate and lived with an abscence of hope.

In fact, in April, he attempted suicide.

A woman who lives down the hall from his apartment saw Cluff being taken away on a stretcher and when he came back home from the hospital, she put him in touch with Krieger.

"Now I have so much hope," he says with a big smile. "My spasms are under control, I can walk quite well, and I can concentrate much better. "In fact, I've just finished a novel that has been sitting there for a very long time."

Last month the House of Commons created a committee to examine the use of non-medical drugs which includes members from all five political parties, including Justice Minister Anne McLellan.

"There is always a lag time between what society wants and what governments do," says a philosophical Cluff.

In the meantime, he and Krieger and hundreds of other sick and dying people will continue doing what they're doing -- the right thing and the illegal thing.

Source: Calgary Sun, The (CN AB)
Author: Licia Corbella, Editor of the Calgary Sun
Published: Sunday June 24, 2001
Copyright: 2001 The Calgary Sun
Contact: callet@sunpub.com
Website: http://www.fyicalgary.com/calsun.shtml

Related Articles & Web Site:

Canadian Links
http://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htm

Calgary Jury Rules Marijuana Crusader Justified
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10116.shtml

Canadians Lean Toward Easing Marijuana Laws
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10076.shtml


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Comment #3 posted by Sudaca on June 25, 2001 at 15:48:24 PT
the arrogance..
"The arrogance behind the idea that someone should just suffer in pain rather than take a relatively benign herb, just because society has too many hang-ups with it, is really maddening. "

so is the idea that people can't choose to have fun with out mind because its "morally weakening" and that it's the duty of the government to stop them (us).

Who gave government the right to decide lifestyle choices?
Why beer? Why cigarettes?

no come on, its really well documented. The United states created its CSA because it was roused to hysteria by racially hysterical crooks who were looking for a bureaucratical pork pie to put their fingers into. To do that they coopted the moralizers of the era and we're still paying the price of that 70 something years from then.

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Comment #2 posted by Anonymous on June 24, 2001 at 16:04:21 PT
The Court will have to step in...
Let me re-iterate from an earlier post, that the government's refusal to stop screwing around with the issue of medical marijuana will lead to the downfall of marijuana prohibition in Canada. Last year, the Canadian Supreme Court gave the government a year to straighten this mess out, but they haven't even come close. Look for the law to be struck down later this summer.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #1 posted by ekim on June 24, 2001 at 15:54:23 PT:

More truer words were never spoken
Interesting, isn't it, that 12 unpaid jurors can spend two days in trial and seven hours in deliberation and do the right thing and we have 301 highly paid members of Parliament, a justice department with dozens of even-more highly paid lawyers working in it and still no relief in sight for legitimate cannabis users like Krieger and Cluff?



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