Pubdate: Tue, 27 Aug 2002
Source: Halifax Herald (CN NS)
Copyright: 2002 The Halifax Herald Limited
Contact:  http://www.herald.ns.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/180
Author: C. W. Donald

KUDOS TO JUDGE

Dear Editor:

Re: "Jail's no place for pot grower" (Aug. 16). Kudos to Nova Scotia 
Supreme Court Justice Felix Cacchione for refusing to let the Crown and 
police railroad yet another non-violent, harmless Nova Scotian for growing 
some weeds in the woods.

National polls have shown for years that Canadians want the current 
cannabis laws changed. Maybe the police will finally get the message that 
wasting money on cannabis offences is an insult to taxpayers as long as 
there is a single unsolved murder, assault, robbery or other real crime 
left on their books.

I hope that Justice Cacchione shows the same common sense when he sentences 
the medical patient involved in the same case, Mike Patriquen, whom the 
police and Crown have desperately tried to paint as a Marvel Comics 
supervillain, but who, in reality, is yet another persecuted user of 
medical cannabis and a patient legally allowed by the federal government to 
grow cannabis for his medical condition.

Justice Cacchione should be lauded for his common sense while the federal 
justice minister muses about changing our country's outdated, and quite 
simply fascist, marijuana laws.

C. W. Donald, Dartmouth
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart