Three times convicted marijuana activist and trafficker avoids jail in Canada
Posted April 11, 2009
On the same day it’s reported that U.S. federal attorneys are going forward with nearly two dozen prosecutions of state-legal dispensary owners who were raided under the Bush administration, Canada lets the well known and three times convicted marijuana activist avoid jail yet again. Justice officials in Manitoba said they will not seek jail time for Grant Krieger, who was convicted of distributing marijuana to hundreds of sick and dying patients across Canada under his Cannabis Research Foundation.
Krieger, who suffers from progressive multiple sclerosis, has been a vocal advocate for marijuana legalization in Canada, and said the plant saved his life. In 2000, a judicial ruling allowed him to start using marijuana for medicinal purposes. A year later he was charged but later acquitted of trafficking marijuana. Two years later, in 2003, he was again convicted of trafficking marijuana but his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court. His most recent run in with the courts came in 2007, when he was sentenced to four months in jail for trafficking.
In yet another startling distinction between the views of Canada and the United States on marijuana policy, even upon his sentencing of jail for selling marijuana, the judge ordered he be allowed to smoke marijuana in prison. Thanks to the Alberta Court of Appeal’s he thankfully will be allowed to do that from the comfort of his own home, though his foundation to help others has been closed down.
“There are no victims in this,” Krieger said outside court. “The only victims are people I can no longer serve.”
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greenferret said,
Every year, marijuana prohibition puts thousands of Americans in prison for a nonviolent, victimless crime that the last three US presidents have all committed.
Tell Obama and your elected representatives that it’s time to legalize and regulate marijuana:
http://tinyurl.com/LegalizeTaxIt
on 13/04/09 at 5:55 am