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Pot Trial Up In Smoke.
By admin | October 13, 2004
The Martlet (UVic)
by Adrian Letourneau
Oct. 7, 2004.
A 1993 Martlet cover proves marijuana has been a relevant issue on campus for over a decade.
Every Wednesday at 4:20 p.m., dozens of UVic students gather near the fountain to show support for sick people who struggle to treat their conditions with medical marijuana.
While nearly all the students are healthy, UVic’s Hempology 101 club attracts attention by supporting the use of illegal drugs. During meetings, members of the Cannabis Buyers Club provide updates on current events involving medicinal marijuana while dozens of students pass joints around a circle.
The activist responsible for Hempology 101, one of the largest student clubs at UVic, is Leon Ted Smith, but Smith has not set foot on the campus since Nov. 8, 2000. Smith was charged with possession and trafficking, with evidence supplied by an undercover officer who had pocketed one of the joints passed out during a Hempology 101 meeting. Since then, Smith has been banned from campus. They took my microphone and speaker, he said.
Four years have passed, and a trial was set for last week to determine the outcome of these charges. Hoping for an acquittal, Smiths victory would be celebrated by nothing short of his triumphant march back onto university soil.
Instead, the trial has been delayed again until January 2005. Two different trials were scheduled to take place at the same time with the same judge. The final decision was to go forward with an alternate case that had been waylaid for two years, as opposed to Smiths own trial, which had nearly hit its four-year anniversary.
Smith remains positive, hoping that the delay of one his most difficult trials will provide him better grounds to argue what he considers his constitutional rights. Smith will be arguing Section 2 dealing with freedom of expression, opinion, peaceful assembly and association, claiming to have been singled out from the crowd because of his personal views. If they were going to charge me with trafficking, then everyone should have been arrested, he said.
Smith will also be arguing Section 7, which deals with liberty and security, suggesting that the passing of joints happened between consenting adults.
Smith is the founder of the Vancouver Island’s Cannabis Buyers Club, a non-profit organization that provides medicinal marijuana to people with chronic illnesses. The organization runs out of Teds Books on Johnson Street, where proof of illness and photo I.D. enable the purchase of medicinal marijuana and the use of a smoking room.
Police raided Smiths store in 2002 up to six different times, resulting in two different charges involving trafficking and possession. Two of the seizures had been in response to robberies at the store. Two others had been without warrants.
Judge Loretta F. Chaperon stayed these charges on Sept. 7 on the grounds that the Cannabis Buyers Club was doing the job the government was not doing, namely providing a reliable supply of marijuana to those that need it. The stay is expected to stick, making the ruling a victory for Smith on its own.
Although there have been no additional arrests related to Hempology 101 since Smiths arrest, both Campus Security and Saanich police are aware of its activities.
In an interview last year, Chris Horsley, media relations officer for the Saanich police, said, The police department is still very concerned with drug use on campus. Just because the police arent showing up every week doesnt mean we are agreeing to what is happening.
We made our point by charging him, said Hunter McDonald, former director of Campus Security Services in November 2003. According to McDonald, Campus Security Services was waiting until the judicial system decides on Smiths case before looking at future marijuana enforcement strategies.
This leaves only three charges with two separate trials to go. Despite the delays and legal pitfalls, Hempology 101 has continued to increase in size. People used to be cautious about coming to meetings, but at one point last year we were getting 120 people to our meetings, right in the middle of campus, said Smith in March 2004.
If that wasnt evidence enough of a growing interest in the legalization of marijuana, Smith speaks every Wednesday at 7 p.m. on the steps of the courthouse about his rights to educate the public about medical marijuana and his own recent trials. These meetings have yet to be broken up by the Victoria police.
Smiths next trial will involve a charge made in November 2000a mere seven days after his arrest on campusin front of the Greater Victoria Public Library where he was found distributing pot cookies for a 4:20 meeting.
The trial is scheduled for Nov. 8. Smith said he has every intention of fighting for the long haul, right up to the Supreme Court itself, even if it takes another 10 years.
The war on drugs is the epitome of a much larger, older struggle than most people realize. It is nothing less than a war on peace, a war on people, said Smith in his book, Hempology 101.
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