Pubdate: Tue, 01 Aug 2000
Source: London Free Press (CN ON)
Copyright: 2000 The London Free Press a division of Sun Media Corporation.
Contact:  http://www.canoe.ca/LondonFreePress/home.html
Forum: http://www.lfpress.com/londoncalling/SelectForum.asp
Author: Julie Carl

SICK ARE NO LONGER CRIMINALS

There will be a few quiet celebrations in some London homes this week.

Celebrations because the Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled medicinal 
marijuana is legal for use by sick people who are helped by it.

Quiet because the people most likely to benefit from this ruling are ill 
and simply don't have the energy for much more than a few hoorays.

London's Lynn Harichy figures she'll muster a cheer or two despite the 
dreadful fatigue her multiple sclerosis causes. The London grandmother has 
been a strong crusader for the change, fighting with every weapon she could 
from letter-writing to trying to light up a joint on the steps of the 
London police station.

Her court case didn't proceed as the landmark she'd hoped for, and as her 
energy faded, she turned her attention to getting a Health Canada exemption 
that would let her use marijuana to control her debilitating symptoms. 
She's been waiting for a year.

Harichy used to run the Cannabis Compassion Club, a centre that supplied 
medicinal marijuana to sick people. Yesterday, when she heard about the 
ruling, she was thinking of her more than 600 customers, sufferers of MS, 
AIDS, cancer, epilepsy, chronic pain. Many of them were too weak even to 
take proper care of themselves let alone go out and buy marijuana from 
scary people.

"We always delivered because the people who bought from us just couldn't go 
out on the street," said Harichy who ran the club with her husband. "It 
would have been too dangerous for them."

Not all of them will live to see the change, but still, Harichy said, this 
light at the end of the tunnel will lift the community's spirits.

She thought of her mother who died a painful death from breast cancer in 
1991, begging for marijuana to ease the pain in the final stages. But 
Harichy didn't know about medicinal marijuana then. And she feared her 
mother would go to jail and have no health care at all.

This ruling means within a year, sick people won't have to break the law to 
buy the medication that makes their lives tolerable.

Yesterday, Ontario's top court recognized the need to stop making criminals 
of sick people.

It released a ruling that said Canada's marijuana laws are unconstitutional 
because they make sick people choose between their health and the risk of 
imprisonment.

And just to make sure the federal government doesn't let things slide on a 
topic it's been loath to touch, the court gave it 12 months to create a law 
legalizing medicinal marijuana. The court tossed out all of Canada's 
marijuana laws, so without a new law at the end of the year, there'll be no 
prohibition on marijuana.

And to underline the fact that it's not the court's intention to have no 
controls, yesterday it also released its unanimous ruling upholding former 
Londoner Chris Clay's possession and trafficking convictions.

Clay had sought to legalize recreational marijuana, claiming pot has no 
harmful side-effects and that criminalization of the drug poses a greater 
danger to the public.

The court's ruling overturning the marijuana laws was based on the case of 
Terry Parker, whose 40-year history of severe epilepsy made his life a 
nightmare until he discovered marijuana could control the 15 to 80 seizures 
he had a week.

The court heard details of Parker's life with uncontrolled epilepsy that 
would make you cringe. His seizures often left him "unconscious, violently 
twitching and writhing on the ground."

Surgery and traditional medication didn't help. Parker also battled 
depression and suicidal feelings.

Listen closely and perhaps you can hear the hundreds of Londoners who will 
benefit from that, offering up quiet cheers and prayers of thanks.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager