Time to Take the High Road

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.


Newshawk: creator@mapinc.org
Pubdate: Sun, 24 Jun 2001
Source: Calgary Sun, The (CN AB)
Website: http://www.canoe.ca/CalgarySun/
Address: 2615 12 Street N.E., Calgary, Alberta T2E 7W9
Email: callet@sunpub.com
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Copyright: 2001 The Calgary Sun
Fax: (403) 250-4180
Author: Licia Corbella