TORONTO - An appeals court expanded the ability of patients to obtain medical marijuana but affirmed that possession by non-patients remains a crime.
The decision yesterday resolved a dilemma faced by the federal government: how to follow a court order to enable patients to get marijuana for treatment while also keeping the possession of pot by others illegal.
With a looming court-imposed deadline to create a supply system for patients, the government in 2001 started registering qualified patients and authorizing them or other designated people to grow pot for medicinal use. Several hundred people have registered with the federal government to use marijuana for medical purposes.
Subsequent court challenges invalidated marijuana possession laws so patients could not be prosecuted for obtaining their medicinal pot. The government this year also started supplying marijuana it grew in an underground mine shaft to registered patients, but many complained about the quality of the pot and the bureaucracy of the system.
Yesterday, the Ontario Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional those provisions in the federal Marijuana Medical Access Regulations restricting licensed growers of medical marijuana from receiving compensation, from growing the drug for more than one qualified patient and from pooling resources with other licensed producers.
The ruling gives so-called compassion centers more leeway to grow and supply medical marijuana.
Because the government medical marijuana program was now valid, the ruling said, marijuana prohibition laws also were constitutionally valid.
This narrow remedy would create a constitutionally valid medical exemption
making marijuana prohibition... immediately constitutionally valid and of full force and effect and removing any uncertainty concerning the validity of the prohibition said a court synopsis of the ruling.
The ruling found that forcing patients to grow their own pot or break the law by buying it on the black market was unfair.
Alan Young, a Toronto lawyer involved in marijuana decriminalization efforts, said the ruling met the needs of medical marijuana users but hurt the decriminalization effort.
Politically we lost a lot
Young said. We won't be able to achieve decriminalization by piggybacking on the deficiencies of the medical marijuana program.
The United States opposes any liberalizing of Canadian marijuana laws, arguing that would increase drug use and smuggling across the border.
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