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Rye grad fights marijuana laws

says medical pot restrictions are too strict

By Matt Carter

Ryersonian Staff Last Updated: 6:07 p.m., Tuesday, October 11, 2005

http://stw.ryerson.ca/~sonian/oct12/news/marijuanatrial.html

Rye Grad Mark Stupak, in his Toronto office, was arrested last year with

1,200 marijuana plants in his apartment (Matt Carter / Ryersonian Staff)

Mark Stupak has a message for the federal government from medical marijuana users: just leave us alone.

“That's the joke,” he says. “That's all we want.”

If it's a joke, it's no longer funny for Stupak. In March 2004, the Ryerson business school graduate was charged with trafficking, distribution and possession of marijuana. “I was scared shitless. When I was in front of the judge, I could barely speak,” he says.

His father put up the $75,000 bail. For the next year-and-a-half, Stupak lived with an 11 p.m. curfew, and was banned from entering the hydroponics store he owns.

“When the cops came, they didn't have a warrant. I let them in. I thought what I was doing was legal. I was under the impression we had approval from the courts,” he says.

What the cops found in Stupak's two-bedroom condo was 1,200 marijuana plants in various stages of growth. In their eyes, Stupak was a big-time drug dealer.

Stupak, 32, first smoked pot in the mid ’90s, several years after his family moved to Toronto from Poland. “When I was at Ryerson, I was always crying. I was always in pain. I was depressed all the time,” he says.

He saw a psychiatrist. He learned that he was not only depressed, but suffering from anxiety. He was prescribed, at different times, Zoloft, Luvox, BuSpar, Desipramine, Prozac and Paxil. Paxil, which Stupak still takes, helped with his anxiety. But nothing helped his depression — until he tried smoking pot.

“At that time I was just learning English. Everything was weird. Everything was scary,” he says. “Pot took the edge off. It allowed me to be more social. It's weird, but it allowed me to study. When you smoke a joint, the depression goes away and you can study.”

Stupak became an activist. He grew his own pot. In 2002, he opened a hydroponics store in Kensington Market, Happy Girl Hydroponics, to help others grow pot and to make some money in the process. A short time later, he started Toronto420.com, a mail-order company that sells marijuana seeds. He made friends with members of compassion clubs, which provide pot to sick people.

At the time of his arrest, Stupak was growing between four and six pounds of pot every three months. He was growing for himself and five sick friends, each of whom belonged to a compassion club and had a note from a doctor, and each of whom smoked between one and two ounces of pot a week. One of the friends was Dan Hagar, who works with Stupak at Toronto420. Hagar has the digestive disorder Crohn's disease. “Every time I eat, there's food passing over bleeding lacerations in my gut,” Hagar says. “I wake up, I'm in pain. I eat breakfast, I'm in pain. Pot stops the cramping, allows me to eat. It allows me to digest the food.”

Stupak did not have a licence from Health Canada to grow or possess pot. Even if he did, he would have been breaking the federal government's medical marijuana access regulations, which prevent a licensed grower from growing for more than one person.

Stupak believes the regulations should be broader. This is the strength of his case, and the basis of the constitutional question he has drafted with a lawyer.

The Ontario Court of Appeal, it seems, is on his side.

In October 2003, the court declared unconstitutional several of the government's access regulations, including the one which prevents licensed growers from growing marijuana for more than one person. In December 2003, the federal government redrafted its access regulations in response to the court's ruling. The new regulations, however, did not include an allowance for licensed growers to grow for more than one person.

According to Health Canada media relations officer, Carolyn-Annik Sexauer, “It was necessary to maintain these limitations to minimize the risk of diversion and to allow Canada to continue to meet its international obligations regarding production of marijuana.”

Sexauer says that Health Canada has eased regulations in other ways, including making government-grown pot more available. Because of these changes, she says, Health Canada is confident its new regulations are consistent with the court’s ruling.

Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young, who has defended medical marijuana users in a number of cases, believes Health Canada has refused to implement the court’s ruling because it fears “normalizing” the growing of marijuana.

“They’re afraid of their own shadows,” Young says.

“They want total control. Their mantra is, ‘this is an illegal drug. We have to be very careful with it.’ But this is not a drug that was discovered yesterday. For a drug that’s been used for hundreds of years, whose effects are very well know historically, it just doesn’t make sense.”

Stupak now has a note from his doctor, approving his use of marijuana. He is in the process of applying to Health Canada for a licence to grow and possess pot, which he hopes to have before his trial begins on Jan. 30, 2006.

He has spent about $10,000 in legal fees so far, but plans to represent himself at his trial. Representing himself these last six months, Stupak has succeeded in getting his curfew rescinded and his bail lowered to $2,000.

Stupak leans back in his chair and chuckles at the notion that he is a criminal. In front of him on his desk sit a pink lighter, a white tupperware container and an overflowing ashtray. “I abused my dog once,” he says. “I flipped him in the air. I was seven years old. That's the only thing I've ever done wrong.”