Reefer madness comes full circle

Bill Kaufmann

Fri, June 22, 2007

Reefer madness comes full circle

By BILL KAUFMANN

Calgary Sun

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So this is what the "war on drugs" has come to.

When prohibition isn't creating and fuelling an lucrative trade, it's locking up the infirm for the crime of helping others like them, with marijuana.

And while it imprisons them, it denies them their medication.

Last Monday, Calgary Provincial Court Judge William Pepler ordered Grant Krieger incarcerated immediately, with no access to the pot the MS sufferer says has made his life liveable.

Reefer madness has come full circle.

In sentencing Krieger last March, Pepler delayed his four-month imprisonment so corrections officials could hash out a way the medicinal marijuana crusader could have his stash.

In the past three months, two physicians balked at signing a federal licence enabling Krieger to bring his dope into jail, fearing the wrath of the "justice" system even though their signatures would merely rubber-stamp what's already perfectly legal.

And no one from the province has stepped up but hey, this is Alberta where drug dealers and addicts get their just desserts.

That even includes a frail citizen who can lawfully possess marijuana and one where a judge in 2000 ruled could provide the substance to other medical users.

Yet Krieger is still busted for sending weed to a Manitoban seeking pain relief from cancer, a man who has since died.

He's sent to prison for trying to make one ravaged soul's last months on Earth a little less wretched.

When he was last sent to jail under similar circumstances in 2001, Krieger was freed after his condition worsened to such a state, even our righteous corrections mandarins and drug warriors were embarrassed.

"He walked into the prison and in four or five days he was in a wheelchair," said fellow activist Keith Fagin.

"They had to clean him after he'd do his private business ... he'll be in a wheelchair again."

Sure enough on Wednesday, Krieger's followers reported he'd deteriorated to the point of being taken to the Remand Centre's hospital. It may not be waterboarding or the rack, but denying someone with a chronic illness their medicine is a form of torture.

We'll even torture people to send a message and maintain the taboo on a drug authorities are finding ever more difficult to sustain.

Are we so mesmerized, so mindlessly beholden to the stigma slapped on any substance our courts deem illegal that we'll allow something as depraved as this?

Most Canadians have concluded the law on this issue is a reeking, festering buttocks, but the politicians and courts trail so far behind they can't detect the odour.

People are being forced to wallow in their misery for the sake of a nebulous, counterproductive law that just as preposterously tells adults they haven't the liberty to recreationally put what they want into their bodies.

One conclusion is that the war on drugs is proceeding so abysmally, the authorities will pluck the lowest hanging fruit they can. Just how low can they go?

Fagin says Krieger needn't smoke dope in his cell and could easily be supplied butter oil infused with THC. But if doctors are too fearful to uphold the law and provincial authorities can't be bothered to intervene, it's moot.

The only hope is inmates not impeded by legalities will share their contraband with Krieger. But he'd risk being busted for alleviating his medical symptoms.

In the meantime, Fagin says Krieger's group will continue to supply the sickest of the sick who are still being failed by a federal medicinal marijuana system.

"Some of the people Grant's helped have told him 'I can actually go to work now' -- there's so many of them," said Fagin. They'd better be careful -- our tax-funded protectors are watching.