Marijuana Safer Than Many Foods: Lawyer

TORONTO - Marijuana is safer than many of the foods people eat and it shouldn't be a crime to use it, a defence lawyer argued yesterday as he challenged the government's right to criminalize cannabis use.

"You can kill rats with sugar, but you can't kill them with marijuana," said Alan Young, who is appealing the marijuana conviction of Chris Clay before the Ontario Court of Appeal in what could become a landmark case in efforts to legalize marijuana.

Mr. Clay, a 28-year-old former London, Ont., hemp shopkeeper, was arrested in 1997 for selling marijuana plants to an undercover police officer.

The judge presiding over Mr. Clay's earlier trial at Ontario Superior Court agreed that marijuana is relatively harmless compared with alcohol and tobacco, but said elected politicians - not the courts - must establish public policy on the issue. Mr. Clay was convicted of drug possession and trafficking, fined $700 and put on three years probation. He decided to launch a constitutional challenge of Canada's marijuana laws.

In yesterday's appeal, Mr. Young argued the legislative process has been proven not to work and Parliament has no constitutional right to criminalize marijuana because there is no evidence to prove it is substantially harmful.

Meanwhile in Ottawa, Health Canada Minister Allan Rock announced yesterday his department will "spend several million dollars" funding clinical trials and longer-term research on the therapeutic value of smoking pot.

The clinical trials, said a government release, are to involve 250 patients in a "double-blind, randomized design."

Double-blind tests require giving one test group the real goods and another a placebo, or fake, to determine the drug's effectiveness. Researchers are confident of finding a suitable bogus joint to use as a placebo.

Copyright 1999 The Ottawa Citizen

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