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Medical marijuana champion beats trafficking charge in court
By Hempology | September 27, 2005
Ted Smith says he was relieved by decision
BY RICHARD WATTS Times Colonist staff
Ted Smith, Victorias high-profile champion for medical marijuana, has beaten a trafficking charge on appeal.
Smith said Friday the result is a huge relief for him and the other members of the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club, a compassion club that supplies marijuana to people who can prove they have an incurable medical condition.
Were all very relieved, said the 35-year-old Smith.
On Thursday, Smith received a letter from the federal Department of Justice saying it had reviewed his appeal and decided he should be granted a new trial.
The Crown, however, has determined it will not proceed and will ask the Court of Appeal to enter an acquittal.
A B.C. provincial court judge convicted Smith in June of trafficking in cannabis resin and sentenced him to a nine-month conditional discharge.
Evidence during the trial centred around laboratory analysis which showed cookies, handed out at the club, contained cannabis resin, an illegal substance.
Smith testified Cannabis Club cooks made the cookies by starting with marijuana, steeping it in vegetable oil and heating it. That oil, after it had cooled and been filtered, was used to make the cookie dough.
Smith said the latest appeal ruling is especially gratifying for the club because it means it has now survived, legally unscathed, four separate police raids on its Johnson Street store.
Those four raids, all within 2002 and 2003, resulted in 11 charges against four people. Not one of those charges resulted in a conviction.
No other club has sustained itself through so many police raids and continued to operate, said Smith.
But he also said the decision of the Crown not to proceed with the appeal is almost disappointing. It means he will not be able to pursue his Constitutional challenge of the law.
That law is still on the books and I wont be happy until its gone, said Smith.
Smith, however, was convicted, himself, of trafficking in marijuana just a few weeks after the resin conviction. He is appealing that conviction.
That charge arose because Smith was caught passing out joints at a a pro-marijuana rally at the University of Victoria on Nov. 8, 2000. That conviction saw him fined $500.
Also, next week, Smith is scheduled to reappear on another trafficking charge, this one the result of him passing out cookies at a rally at the downtown library on Nov. 15, 2000.
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