Calgary medical marijuana activist Grant Krieger, who has multiple sclerosis and federal permission to smoke cannabis for medical purposes, was sentenced to four months in jail for trafficking after admitting he mailed two packages of marijuana to Manitoba in 2003 and 2004.[1] Provincial court Judge William Pepler said incarceration was appropriate but delayed custody until June so corrections officials could arrange in-jail access to the drug, recognising Krieger’s constitutional right to receive marijuana for pain.[1] Krieger said his condition had worsened during earlier jail stays without cannabis and vowed to keep defying a law he said shut out patients from the federal programme.[1]
In June Pepler ordered Krieger to jail after Alberta’s solicitor general refused the earlier request for in-jail access, and Krieger began serving his sentence without the drug while his son warned he would get sick.[2]
The sentence followed an earlier case in which Krieger was charged in 1999 after police seized 29 marijuana plants from his Calgary grow-op, acquitted by a jury in 2001, convicted at a 2003 retrial where the judge directed a guilty verdict, and cleared when the Supreme Court unanimously overturned that conviction in October 2006 for denying him a meaningful jury trial.[3] A separate January 2004 arrest by Manitoba Mounties, who found him with 7,500 dollars in cash and marijuana he was delivering to 28 clients, was still awaiting a court date.[3]
