Pubdate: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB) Copyright: 2003 Calgary Herald Contact: http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryherald/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66 Author: John Gradon, Calgary Herald Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Grant+Krieger POT CRUSADE COSTS MAN HIS MARRIAGE Marie Krieger is angry, disenchanted and hurting. "This has cost us so much more than the money," says the woman who for 28 years has been married to renowned pot crusader Grant Krieger. "This has cost us our marriage. We're getting a divorce." And then tearfully she adds: "I still love this man enormously. This is the man I've spent most of my life with. We'll always be friends as far as I'm concerned." Does her husband agree? "He's a man of few words," she chuckles, and right now her husband, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, is not around to talk for himself. "We've been talking about a divorce for about a year. I've lost jobs over this. Even though it's legal aid, the monetary costs are soaring. Our family has been discriminated against because of this. I'm tired," says the woman who has stood resolutely beside her husband since he took up his legal battle to first take and then provide pot for medicinal purposes in the mid-90s. "It's just that Grant thinks that the time has come when I should be protected from the costs and everything else that will continue in the future," she says. And in that one statement comes confirmation that the business of providing marijuana to those who suffer from such illnesses as multiple sclerosis, AIDS, cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) will continue across Canada, courtesy of eight far-flung branches of the Krieger Foundation. "We have something like 315 members across the country who are relying on us to help alleviate their pain. The foundation, which is now bigger than any one individual, even Grant, will carry on -- even in the knowledge there will be more court cases to come," she says from the foundation's HQ in Calgary. She and her husband are living apart, she says, but she's still involved with the foundation, though for the moment she doesn't know for how long. She's speaking about 12 hours after her husband's latest court appearance resulted in a jury returning a guilty verdict on a charge of trafficking marijuana. In unusual circumstance, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Paul Chrumka demanded they return a guilty verdict, even though he personally had to instruct and admonish two jurors who pleaded to be dismissed because in all conscience they could not see their way to a guilty verdict. The judge was administering the letter of a law that, while it says it is legal for an individual to take marijuana for medical reasons, it is decidedly hazy when it comes to the matter of others in similar circumstances being supplied or provided with the drug. Amid accusations that he took the matter out of the hands of the jury, Chrumka, the jury finally having returned a guilty verdict, sentenced Krieger to one day in jail without actually having to go to jail. Thursday morning's conversation with Marie Krieger gets off to a very rocky start. "John Gradon?" she ponders and breaks down in tears. "You're the guy at the Herald who criticized Grant so badly a few years back. That hurt us so much. It was cruel. It was just so typical of people not understanding what this all about." After a mea culpa and an apology not so much as for what was written as for the deep and long hurt the criticism so evidently caused, Krieger gracefully carries on with the chat and the personal revelations and statements of intent on behalf of the foundation come. It's about compassion, she insists. She had helped ensure that as many sufferers of debilitating and terminal illnesses had been in court Wednesday to put a human face on the issue for the judge and the jury about to decide her husband's eventual fate. She talks of the bizarre sight of two jurors -- a woman, first, and then a man -- being instructed by the judge on their reluctance to return a guilty verdict. She'll never forget the man in particular, she says. "He was a big burly man with a beard," she says. "And he was in tears because he could not find it in his heart to convict Grant. God bless him for coming out there and showing his true feelings." And she asks two questions. "Why the heck was there a jury at all?" And . . . "Where's the compassion? There's got to be room for it in the law," she says. The woman with a long memory and a shattered life has every right to ask. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake