CANADIAN POLITICAL PRISONER 
                 IN WAR ON HERB

POLITICAL PRISONER IN WAR ON HERB

After a week in the slammer, Chris Buors says he has no problem being off the weed.

"It doesn't bother me a bit -- I can take it or leave it," says the Winnipeg compassion club operator sentenced last week to six months in jail and three years probation after he was caught growing 59 plants in his home.

"But yes I do -- I smoke some of it," Buors says frankly in a phone interview from Headingley.  "I find it's a really enjoyable experience, just like a couple of drinks after supper to relax, for crying out loud."

Buors' personal habit wasn't the issue in his trial -- it was the basement grow-op he was running to supply the 21 members of his compassion club, who all suffer from various ailments but are unable to obtain Section 56 Health Canada permits to possess medicinal marijuana, though some are past permit-holders.

And Buors makes no bones about it -- unless doctors start issuing permits to people who feel they need the herbal remedy, he will reopen the compassion club and start all over again once he's released.  This despite Queen's Bench Justice Alan MacInnes's warning that if "I do get into trouble in the next three years he'll spank me real good."

Buors is not your typical pot grower.  A soft-spoken 47-year-old who quotes Thomas Jefferson and other thinkers with knowledge and conviction, Buors was fired from his job as locomotive engineer with CN after his previous bust in 1997.  Since then Buors has thrown himself into pot activism, running three times federally for the Marijuana Party and leading the Libertarian Party of Manitoba in provincial elections.

Until last week, he wrote letters to the editor almost every day ( sometimes more than one ), debating columnists, responding to news stories and generally advocating personal liberty -- the right to self-medication and home protection being paramount -- and condemning the "therapeutic state" which stigmatizes personal choices by labelling them addictions.

Although the judge scoffed at comparisons with the likes of Nelson Mandela, Buors is unquestionably a political prisoner, since his "crime" did not harm a single person, has widespread acceptance among citizens, yet contravened laws enacted by the state.

In fact, given the severity of his sentence, you could say he is Manitoba's political prisoner No.  1 in the war against a herb.

BUORS BELIEVES he was hit with such a stiff sentence -- vicious thugs get off with lighter terms and compassion club operators charged in other provinces have walked away with no jail time -- because "I know I'm a public figure and Judge MacInnes was sending a message."

It was a message that rang loud and clear for Jack Cartier of Toronto, who wrote to The Sun: "I am disgusted with the news of Chris Buors' six-month sentence for aiding sick and dying people relieve their suffering.  Compassion clubs, like Buors', operate all across the country offering cannabis to sick people.  In the vast majority of cases, law enforcement and the courts either turn a blind eye or even offer their support of such ventures."

Commenting on the judge's opinion that Buors had little chance of being rehabilitated, Cartier wrote, "Obviously, it's MacInnes who needs the rehabilitation.  Buors grew plants -- a traditional herbal remedy used for thousands of years -- in his basement and provided it to the community's weakest members.  What message is Judge MacInnes sending to sick people? Suffer?

"Judge MacInnes, you make me sick."

I understand Cartier's anger.  I find it appalling that Chris Buors is sitting in a cell in Headingley for at least four months because he was growing a herb for sick people.

No one was harmed by what Buors was doing.  Quite the opposite -- he was discharging relief from pain and suffering, enabling the infirm to avoid truly criminal elements to get their "stuff."

And under the Liberal "decriminalization" bill now before Parliament, Buors could be hit even harder.  While possession for up to 15 grams will net a mere fine, the penalty for large-scale grow ops will double to allow maximum prison terms of 14 years.

The war against a herb rages on.