HTTP/1.0 200 OK Content-Type: text/html Medical Pot Case Adjourns Again 
Pubdate: Thu, 22 Aug 2002
Source: Chilliwack Progress (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 The Chilliwack Progress
Contact:  http://www.theprogress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/562
Author: Robert Freeman
Bookmarks: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada)
http://www.mapinc.org/kubby.htm (Kubby, Steve)

MEDICAL POT CASE ADJOURNS AGAIN

A medical marijuana court case was adjourned for a third time this
week by a B.C. Supreme Court Justice in Chilliwack.

Justice Brian Joyce also denied a request for an interim court order
to allow Steve Kubby to possess marijuana for medical purposes.

'The judges are going to have his blood on their hands if he's
arrested and goes to jail again,' Mr. Kubby's wife Michele said after
the court ruling Monday.

She says if her husband's access is blocked in jail to the marijuana
that he is being forced to buy illegally due to the court delay, he
could die.

Mr. Kubby, a U.S. marijuana activist seeking refugee status in Canada,
is asking the court to grant a medical exemption from pot possession
laws. Lawyer John Conroy says the court now has evidence from 'two top
notch cancer specialists' that his client should be allowed to use the
drug in the large amounts that he requires.

'What we had to try and convince Justice Joyce to do was strike down
the regulation as unconstitutional,' Mr. Conroy says, but there was no
court time available to make that argument Monday.

He says his client could legally obtain morphine and heroin in just a
few hours based on the seriousness of his illness, but those drugs are
more harmful than marijuana.

However, the lawyer says he is 'very optimistic' Mr. Kubby will have a
medical exemption from Health Canada by the Aug. 26 court hearing.

Federal Health Minister Anne McLellan appeared to be backing away from
a $5.7 million program to supply medical marijuana to patients, but a
Health Canada spokesman in Ottawa says there is no change in policy.
Medical exemptions continue and clinical trials of marijuana will go
ahead. More than 800 exemptions have been issued so far.

The Supreme Court of Canada will hear three cases of non-medicinal pot
on Dec. 13, but it could be a year before a court ruling is made.
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