Pubdate: Mon, 09 Aug 2004
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2004 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326

NOT ABOVE THE LAW

A marijuana grow-op in Smiths Falls has done all Canadians a favour by 
focusing a bright light on the federal government's flagrant violation of 
the rule of law in its handling of medical marijuana.

Last week, police raided Carasel Harvest Supply Corp., which operates in an 
old Canadian Tire building, after they learned (through media reports) that 
the company had started growing marijuana even though Health Canada hadn't 
given the company a licence yet.

Health Canada's refusal to give a licence to Carasel is now being 
challenged in the courts as an "unconstitutional barrier" to medicinal 
marijuana users. Right now, the health ministry will let an eligible sick 
person grow marijuana, and it will let that person designate someone else 
to grow marijuana on his or her behalf, but it won't let more than one user 
designate the same other person to do the growing. That means the only 
legal multiple-client grower is the government's single source in Flin 
Flon, whose product many users dismiss as ditchweed.

This policy is more than addled: it's unconstitutional. Last fall, the 
Ontario Court of Appeal struck down three Health Canada rules on 
marijuana-growing, including the no-multiple-customers one, on the grounds 
that they effectively forced many users to buy their medicine from drug 
dealers -- what the government called "unlicensed suppliers."

The rules, the court's three judges wrote, "create an alliance between the 
Government and the black market whereby the Government authorizes 
possession of marijuana for medical purposes and the black market supplies 
the necessary product."

Health Canada dropped two rules so users could now pay growers and the 
lowering the medical standards for some of them, but it decided to ignore 
the court's decision that said a grower should be able to supply more than 
one user. Spokeswoman Aggie Adamczyk says the regulators consider the 
court's order "useful guidance" and believe they're living up to the 
principles laid out by the judges.

It's hard to see how Health Canada can say that, as the court's decision 
was clear: Health Canada either had to scrap its whole regulation system 
and try again, or keep the existing system minus the three rules that were 
unconstitutional and "of no force and effect." The department decided to 
ignore the court, Ms. Adamczyk says, because growers working for more than 
one user might find ways to sell extra marijuana on the side, thus 
supplying the black market.

Health Canada doesn't get to follow the court orders it agrees with and 
skip the ones it doesn't: if you tried it, you'd go to jail. Besides, such 
doublethink disregards the whole basis of the judges' orders: that the old 
rules forced legal users to buy their medicine from drug dealers.

The volume of the supply aside, a single grower with a profit motive is 
easier to keep an eye on, and has a stronger incentive to comply with the 
rules, than a horde of amateurs with separate production costs to pay.

Canadians shouldn't have to wait for Carasel's case to wend its way through 
the court system before the federal government comes up with a marijuana 
policy that's both constitutional and coherent.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart