If there is a logical explanation for politicians doing something both unpopular and wrong, this may be it.

This is first rate journalism. There must be something in the water up there.)

August 13, 1998
From eye Magazine
Toronto, Canada
eye@eye.net

http://www.eye.net

By Nate Hendley

CALLING DR. DOPE

Jim Wakeford who’s dying of AIDS, got a government grant to sue the government for the right to free medical marijuana. It’s the latest twist in Canada’s constitutional dance with legalized pot

By Nate Hendley

The first thing you notice is how orderly the place is, as if the owner of the apartment had spent hours making sure his books, tapes and Georgia O’Keefe prints lined up in perfect symmetry. Everything in the downstairs living room is neat and precise, while the upstairs rooms are bright and airy and filled with art work and photographs. The images on the upstairs walls are of celebrities, former lovers—some of whom are now dead—and reclining, nude males.

There’s also a few pictures of Jim Wakeford as a young man, back when he was a hippie and had hair to his shoulders, back when the flesh on his face didn’t draw tight and he looked alive and healthy. The pictures were taken around 1970 or so, he explains, when he worked for Oolagen House, a treatment facility he founded where street kids could get help for drug problems.

Wakeford could never pass for a hippie these days: his hair’s cropped close to the skull and he looks too ill to be a carefree flower child. He’s gaunt and walks around his Church Street apartment on legs that seem impossibly thin. Wakeford weighs 129 pounds on a 5’8 frame, which is 11 pounds heavier than he weighed at his lightest.

Back in the ‘60s, Wakeford lobbied for street kids; in the ‘80s he was an advocate for HIV patients, and worked at Casey House the well-known Toronto AIDS hospice. Now that he’s dying, his new mission is himself.

Wakeford, who’s 53, wants the federal government to provide him with "good, clean and affordable marijuana." For the past two years, Wakeford’s been smoking "about an ounce a month ... a couple joints a day" for medical reasons. Diagnosed with HIV in 1989, Wakeford says cannabis suppresses nausea due to medication and stimulates his appetite. It also helps control the anxiety brought on by taking endless rounds of legal medications designed to buy time against a terminal medical condition.

Asked why he doesn’t just buy marijuana downtown, like any other pot enthusiast, Wakeford gets testy. "I can buy marijuana as easily as bottled water... but the quality is inconsistent and the price astronomical."

You can also get arrested for it. Six months is the maximum penalty for first-time possession of small amounts of pot under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Together with longtime cannabis activist and Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young, Wakeford has taken the government to court, charging the feds with violating his constitutional rights.

During the first week of August, Wakeford and Young presented their case in Ontario Court’s General Division. On Aug. 7, Justice Harry LaForme announced he will deliver his decision on Wakeford’s case within a few weeks. Potentially, the judge’s decision could open the door for legal medical marijuana across Canada, thus resolving an issue federal politicians seem too terrified to tackle.

Wakeford, who remains guarded optimistic about his case, smiles as he contemplates the judge’s ruling. "It’s time," he quips, "to get organized crime out of medicine."

RIGHTS FOR THE DYING

If O.J. Simpson’s lawyers played up the "race card" during that trial, Alan Young is perfectly willing to admit he played "the death card" at Wakeford’s hearing. "It’s hard to think of any rational reason to deny a dying man a medicine that might provide him with relief," he explains. "I used this to my advantage."

Even the prosecution’s star witness, Dr. Harold Kalant, testified that if there was a perfect candidate for medical pot in Canada, it would be Jim Wakeford. Representing the former Addiction Research Foundation and the University of Toronto Pharmacology Department, Dr. Kalant is one of Canada’s top marijuana experts. Normally a skeptic when it comes to medicinal cannabis, Dr. Kalant has testified in other cases that Marinol (a synthetic drug containing THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its psychoactive kick) is superior to cannabis.

Marinol is legal for cancer and AIDS patients, but Wakeford says it made him violently sick the one time he tried it.
See
Canadian Government Says Man With AIDS Doesn’t Need Medical Marijuana; Judge Promises Ruling Soon - 2 Articles
Young’s legal challenge is based on Sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 7 states that all citizens have the right to "life, liberty and security". By denying Wakeford legal pot, the government is putting his life at risk, Young argues. Were Wakeford to be arrested for buying medicine on the black market, his liberty would be forfeit.

Young has used life and liberty arguments in previous constitutional challenges aimed at overthrowing Canada’s pot laws. Where the Wakeford case differs from others is the way Young is using Section 15, which states that all Canadians have a "right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination." Young claims that Wakeford’s equality rights under Section 15 are being violated. "People with AIDS are discriminated against because they can’t get medicines they need due to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act," he explains.

Young says that his personal strategy is to "bring as many of these cases as forward as possible... if the courts keep handing out [legal] exemptions to the drug laws, then it will force the government to act because the government doesn’t want to lose control."

POLITICIANS HIDE BEHIND THE COURTS

The money for this attack on federal prohibition happens to come from the government-funded Court Challenges Program. Based in Winnipeg, the CCP was set up in 1994 to fund "court cases that advance language and equality rights guaranteed under Canada’s Constitution," according to the organization’s website. The CCP, which receives $2.75 million a year from the federal Department of Canadian Heritage, gave Wakeford $50,000 -- which, along with the few thousand dollars Wakeford managed to raise on his own, has allowed Young to present an impressive case.

Aaron Harnett, who successfully represented Toronto epileptic and medical pot user Terry Parker in a similar constitutional challenge last December, says he isn’t surprised the Court Challenges Program offered Wakeford cash. "I think the government actors in this scenario would be perfectly pleased if the courts took up this action (and changed the law)," he states. Court-ordered pot would allow the government to disavow any responsibility for the marijuana issue, he says.

Back in January of this year, Dann Michols, the director of the general therapeutic products directorate at Health Canada, visited Wakeford at his apartment. "He told me the federal government would make medical marijuana available within months," says Wakeford. As far as Wakeford and Young are aware, the Liberals aren’t straining themselves to live up to Michols’ promise.

If all Wakeford wanted was cheap and easily available dope, he could join one of the several underground medical marijuana clubs around Ontario. In 1997, Wakeford helped pot activist Neev Tapiero set up C.A.L.M. (Cannabis as Legitimate Medicine), an above-ground medical marijuana dispensary modelled after medical cannabis centres in California. C.A.L.M. was Toronto’s first medical marijuana club and folded after a few months, due to lack of membership.

According to Tapiero, there are new medical pot clubs now operating in Toronto, London, Kitchener, Guelph and Waterloo, but Wakeford isn’t interested in joining.

Part of Wakeford’s reluctance seems to be attitude. Why slink into a cannabis club that might get busted when you can sue the government to provide you with legal medicine? A handful of American medical patients receive free marijuana from the U.S. federal government, courtesy of a now discontinued experimental medicine program. Wakeford sees no reason why a similar system couldn’t work in Canada, or, even better, why marijuana couldn’t be covered under provincial drug plans and sold at legal outlets.

The main reason why marijuana isn’t found in Ontario pharmacies is because the United States lies south of our border.

(Ed. note: "Lies" is exactly the right word, although DEAland does not confine its lying to its own borders.)

American politicians have turned their War on Some Drugs into a fundamentalist crusade, leaving Canadian governments afraid to endorse even tepid reforms, such as medical marijuana.

But with plaintiffs like Jim Wakeford and lawyers like Alan Young ready to keep forcing the matter, politicians won’t be able to avoid the issue forever. In the meantime, it’s up to Justice Harry LaForme to decide whether to change a law to accommodate a dying man who wants to smoke pot in peace.

First sidebar:

Takin’ it to the courts

Major Ontario court cases of the last two years (not including Jim Wakeford’s)

Defendant: Chris Clay.

Lawyers: Alan Young and Paul Burstein.

The case: After his London, Ont., store Hemp Nation was raided by police, Clay teamed up with Young to launch a constitutional challenge to Canada’s pot laws. Young tried to prove that pot isn’t harmful enough to criminalize and that adults should have the right to use it.

Verdict: On Aug. 14, 1997, Justice John McCart dismissed Young’s constitutional challenge and found Clay guilty on several pot-related counts. The judge did say, however, that marijuana isn’t addictive, doesn’t cause insanity, doesn’t lead to hard drugs and that Parliament should consider decriminalizing it.

What now: Young has taken the case to the Ontario Court of Appeals.

Lawyer: Aaron Harnett.

The case: In 1987, Parker, who smokes marijuana to control his severe epilepsy, became the first person in Canada to win the legal right to use medical pot. Too bad he didn’t have the right to grow his own medicine: in 1996, cops raided Parker’s Toronto apartment and arrested him for cultivation and trafficking. In court, Harnett took a leaf from Young’s book and launched a constitutional challenge in which he stated Parker’s security, life and liberty would be violated if he were denied access to marijuana.

Verdict: On Dec. 10, 1997, Justice Patrick Sheppard ruled in Parker’s favor. The judge not only reiterated Parker’s right to possess pot, but said he can grow his own dope, too.

What now: The crown is appealing the verdict.

The case: On Sept. 15, 1997, Harichy, who smokes marijuana to relieve pain and discomfort associated with multiple sclerosis, marched to London police station and deliberately got herself arrested for possessing a joint. She plans to turn her trial into a forum on legalizing medical pot.

Second sidebar:

Altered states

1975 -- The Supreme Court of Alaska rules that smoking marijuana in the privacy of your home is legal.

1994 -- Top courts in Colombia and Germany decriminalize marijuana.