PRO-MARIJUANA COUPLE FIGHTING ORDER TO LEAVE

Steve and Michele Kubby, medicinal-marijuana advocates from
California who were denied refugee status here, now face removal from
Canada - barring a last-ditch, court-ordered stay in early January.

Yesterday, Michele Kubby lost her appeal of a B.C. Supreme Court
ruling that rejected her argument that Canada's marijuana
medicinal-access regulations were unconstitutional.

She'd been rejected in her application to Health Canada for
permission to use pot for an unspecified ailment -- an application
that had been accepted for her husband, who suffers from adrenal cancer.

The couple, parents of two young girls, are pursuing a stay of their
removal order. If the bid fails, the family will be deported.

"We are being politely asked by border services to leave by the 12th
of January," Michele Kubby told The Province yesterday. "They're
giving us time to get our affairs in order and then leave by midnight
on the 12th of January. They say: 'We won't touch you, we won't
arrest you or anything -- until the 12th of January.'"

Kubby and her husband plan to go to the Federal Court of Canada on
Jan. 9 seeking the stay.

Steve Kubby came to B.C. in 2001 after drug charges were laid against
him and he was later convicted in California of what he calls
possession of "minute quantities of mescaline and psilocin." He
claims the police extracted the drugs from remnants of a cactus and a
mushroom found in a guest bedroom in the Kubbys' California home.

The Kubbys say since arriving in Canada they've obeyed the law and
don't deserve to be returned to the U.S., where Steve faces
potentially life-threatening incarceration.