Medical marijuana illegal, says US Supreme Court

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/politics/06cnd-scot.html?ei=5094&en=166cf10948687873&hp=&ex=1118116800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

June 6, 2005

High Court Allows Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Users

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WA****NGTON -- Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors
prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday,
concluding
that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had
successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various
illnesses.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress
could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a
case
involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana. The court
said the prosecution of pot users under the federal Controlled Substances
Act was constitutional.

"I'm going to have to be prepared to be arrested," said Diane Monson, one
of
the women involved in the case.

Stevens said the court was not passing judgment on the potential medical
benefits of marijuana, and he noted "the troubling facts" in the case.
Monson's backyard crop of six marijuana plants was seized by federal
agents
in 2002, although the California law was on Monson's side.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be
allowed
to set their own rules.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's
economic
activity so long as it involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state
borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed
to
patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

"Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not
popular opinion. To date, science and research have not determined that
smoking marijuana is safe or effective," John Walters, director of
National
Drug Control Policy, said Monday.

Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, "but perhaps even
more im****tant than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in
which
the voices of voters allied with these (California women) may one day be
heard in the halls of Congress."

California's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 1996, allows
people
to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's
recommendation. Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon,
Vermont and Wa****ngton state have laws similar to California.

In those states, doctors generally can give written or oral
recommendations
on marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV and other serious illnesses.

"The states' core police powers have always included authority to define
criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their
citizens," said O'Connor, who was joined in her dissent by two other
states'
rights advocates: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence
Thomas.

The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who
have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years. They earlier
invalidated federal laws dealing with gun possession near schools and
violence against women on the grounds the activity was too local to
justify
federal intrusion.

O'Connor said she would have opposed California's medical marijuana law if
she were a voter or a legislator. But she said the court was overreaching
to
endorse "making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in
one's own home for one's own medicinal use."

Alan Hopper, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, said that local
and
state officers handle 99 percent of marijuana prosecutions and must still
follow any state laws that protect patients. "This is probably not going
to
change a lot for individual medical marijuana patients," he said.

The case concerned two Californians, Monson and Angel Raich. The two had
sued then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking for a court order
letting them smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home
raids or other intrusion by federal authorities.

Raich, an Oakland woman suffering from ailments including scoliosis, a
brain
tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain, smokes marijuana every few hours.
She said she was partly paralyzed until she started smoking pot. Monson,
an
accountant who lives near Oroville, Calif., has degenerative spine disease
and grows her own marijuana plants in her backyard.

In the court's main decision, Stevens raised concerns about abuse of
marijuana laws. "Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous
physicians who overprescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so,"
he said.

The case is Gonzales v. Raich, 03-1454.