Conroy and Boje: claiming asylum (Keith Thirkell/The Province)

The Marijuana Mess

Maclean's, November 22, 1999

By Andrew Phillips (Washington)

Talk about uphill battles. Renee Boje - artist, fugitive from American justice, denizen of British Columbia's Sunshine Coast - is trying to convince a B.C. court to declare her a refugee from political persecution in the United States. This, let's face it, is a tough case to make. Prosecutors in California want Canada to send Boje back to face charges of conspiring to grow and sell marijuana, hardly the usual definition of a political crime. But however farfetched her claim, she's already managed to draw attention to the incoherence of American drug laws.

Boje's case goes back to 1997 in Los Angeles, where she met Todd McCormick, a cancer patient and activist for the use of marijuana to treat ailments like cancer and AIDS. McCormick hired her to illustrate a book he was writing on growing marijuana for medical use. She started hanging out at his mansion in tony Bel-Air, which police raided on July 29, 1997.

There they found 4,116 high-grade marijuana plants. Police say McCormick planned to sell them; he says he was using the plants to treat the symptoms of his own cancer and was trying to develop new strains of marijuana to fight other diseases. Boje, now 30, was among nine people arrested that night. The strongest evidence against her, according to police affidavits, is that she was seen watering some of McCormick's plants. The punishment she and the others face under U.S. federal law is draconian: a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison without parole.

Not surprisingly, Boje decided to duck the bullet. She fled to British Columbia in 1998, after her lawyer told her he didn't think he could get her off. A native of New York City, she was drawn to Vancouver because of its relaxed attitudes towards marijuana, and has been fighting extradition to the United States in the B.C. Supreme Court. She expects a ruling on Dec. 15. If she loses - which is likely - she plans to take her case for asylum to federal Justice Minister Anne McLellan.

That, to put it mildly, is a long shot. Canada, especially British Columbia, is already seen by many in Washington as soft on drug. Powerful pot known as "B.C. Bud" is flowing south, grown in the relatively tolerant climate of British Columbia and snapped up by American consumers willing to pay up to $9,000 a pound. And for Canada to give Boje asylum would be an open slap at the American justice system.

McCormick and Boje have managed, though, to underline the confused, and confusing, nature of U.S. law. Washington, caught up in its $27-billion-a-year "war on drugs," adamantly maintains a so-called zero-tolerance policy and classifies marijuana among the most highly controlled substances, along with heroin and cocaine. Penalties have soared - like the 10-year minimum hanging over Boje.

But when citizens have had a chance to express their views directly, they've made a common-sense distinction between legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes and allowing its use for valid medical reasons. Voters in six states and the District of Columbia have approved ballot measures allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana to alleviate the symptoms of serious diseases like cancer and AIDS. And in 1996, Californians approved Proposition 215, allowing patients to smoke pot with a doctor's recommendation.

The medical evidence is also tilting against Washington. A study conducted by a branch of the National Academy of Sciences concluded in March that the active ingredients in marijuana are indeed effective against cancer and AIDS symp toms. Significantly, it also found no evidence that letting sick people use the drug would increase illegal use by others. Almost all politicians, though, run from the issue at full speed. Even suggesting that marijuana might have valid uses opens them up to the "soft on drugs" charge - despite the fact that noted conservatives like Newt Gingrich were early sponsors of medical marijuana laws. Bill Clinton, who famously claimed that he did not inhale, has been predictably silent on the issue.

All that leaves McCormick and Boje under the gun. His trial opens in Los Angeles on Nov. 16, and a judge has already ruled that he cannot invoke medical necessity in his defence. Boje acknowledges that she is "one of the small fish" in the case, which has become a rallying point for medical-marijuana advocates. Her B.C. lawyer, John Conroy, will press her case for asylum, but the the real fight is for public opinion. "Does it shock the conscience of Canadians," he asks, "to send a young woman to face 10 years in prison for watering plants for a man who had them for a medical reason?" That's the question the justice minister will have to address.