Steve Kubby

Five years after fleeing to Canada to avoid jail, medical marijuana activist Steve Kubby returned here in handcuffs Friday facing an uncertain future and a stint behind bars that his doctor contends might prove a death sentence. Law enforcement officers whisked Kubby off a commercial jet at San Francisco International Airport on Thursday evening, and friends said he soon began to feel the effects of his rare form of adrenal cancer while in custody.

An attorney for jailed medical marijuana activist Steve Kubby on Tuesday asked that the cancer-stricken inmate be allowed to eat cannabis in food or pills while behind bars, or be released to serve his time under house arrest. Kubby, a former Libertarian candidate for governor of California, fled Placer County in 2001 and moved to Canada to avoid a 120-day jail stint he contends would have been a death sentence without marijuana.

A medical marijuana activist who long argued that he needed the drug to cope with his cancer surprised a judge and supporters Friday morning by announcing that a synthetic substitute provided to him in jail has proved an effective replacement. Thanks to Marinol, a pill form of THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient in pot, Steve Kubby is "smiling and happy," lawyer Bill McPike said. "In fact, he said it's the best he's felt in years."

Steve Kubby, a California medical marijuana pioneer who was forced to return from Canada earlier this year and was thrown into jail, earned his freedom Monday after serving a third of the four-month sentence his doctor predicted might kill him. Placer County jail officials said Kubby's release after 40 days came because of his good behavior in custody and their need to reduce crowding under a federal court order.

Medical marijuana advocate Steve Kubby returned to Placer County Jail on Wednesday for up to two months for fleeing to Canada five years ago to avoid serving time on a drug conviction. When his longtime effort to win Canadian asylum was rejected this year, Kubby returned and spent 40 days in jail for his 2000 conviction on possession of a psychedelic mushroom and one peyote button.

Placer County Jail released medical marijuana advocate Steve Kubby on Wednesday after he spent three weeks behind bars for fleeing to Canada five years ago to avoid serving time on a drug conviction. Kubby returned to the United States this year and spent 40 days in jail for the original conviction on possession of a psychedelic mushroom and peyote button. After a few days of freedom, he returned to the jail to serve 60 days for failing to appear in 2001 to serve his original sentence.

Along the rugged coastline of British Columbia, more than a generation ago, the first American refugees trickled in. As the Vietnam War raged, draft dodgers who chose to flee America rather than fight an unacceptable war gravitated to Canada's west coast, to rain-washed Vancouver and northward in tiny villages astride deep fiords left by the glacial past. A few of the new arrivals brought with them a taste for marijuana, and some began cultivating pot gardens.

To see the Sechelt, B.C., home of expatriate California activist Steve Kubby is to understand the depth of the man's passion about medical marijuana. Up on the top floor, the cumulus of medicinal cannabis smoke is often so thick that it has been declared off limits to 6-year-old Brooke and her sister, Crystal, 3. This level is also nerve center for Team Kubby. A trio of computers generates mass e-mail chatter to cannabis constituents.

Re "Pot User's Refugee Bid Is Rejected," Dec. 9: I wish I could find consolation in knowing that the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on senseless immigration policy. Does Paulah Dauns, a member of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board, really think that Steve Kubby will be allowed access to medical marijuana should he be returned to Placer County? It's hard to believe the Kubbys went through the trouble of leaving the country to avoid a mere four-month jail sentence unless they believe the danger of Steve joining the ranks of Proposition 215 martyrs is real.