Pubdate: Sat, 04 Jan 2003
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2003, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Page: A5
Author: Colin Freeze

OTTAWA TO APPEAL RULING AGAINST POT LAWS

Ottawa is appealing a ruling that found Canada's marijuana-possession laws 
are no longer valid.

In a notice filed yesterday, the Crown says it will try to show that an 
Ontario judge erred when he concluded that a 16-year-old broke no laws when 
he was caught carrying five grams of marijuana last spring.

Jim Leising, director of the Justice Department's prosecution service in 
Ontario, announced the decision to appeal yesterday, one day after Judge 
Douglas Phillips in Windsor dismissed possession charges against the teenager.

Judge Phillips agreed with the defence that a previous court decision 
rendered the laws against marijuana possession invalid.

An appeal is a matter of some urgency for the Justice Department; the 
validity of a marijuana law which many people are accused of breaking is an 
open question.

Brian McAllister, the teenager's lawyer, said the case he won on Thursday 
leaves Ontario's legal system in a quandary. "I don't see why any judge 
would want to hear any other cases involving the issue until this appeal 
has been adjudicated."

A judge in the Ontario Superior Court in Windsor will hear the appeal, 
likely within a few weeks.

The confusion created by the teenager's case has its roots in a ruling made 
two years ago.

In July, 2000, an Ontario Court of Appeal judge ruled that Canada's 
marijuana-possession laws are unconstitutional because they do not allow 
chronically ill people access to a substance that could lessen their suffering.

Though the ruling, in effect, struck down the possession law, the judge 
explicitly delayed its effect for one year. The hope was that Ottawa could 
come up with a more compassionate scheme in the interim.

The federal cabinet responded with new rules, but they may not be 
sufficient. The judge in the teenager's case ruled this week that the 
appeal court had called for nothing less than new laws passed by 
Parliament, and that regulations issued by cabinet do not carry enough weight.

Judge Phillips ruled that because the underlying constitutional issue was 
never properly addressed, the possession laws remained invalid regardless 
of whether the person caught with cannabis was using it for medicinal or 
recreational purposes.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart