Pubdate: Tue, 05 Sep 2000 Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA) Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. Contact: PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191 Fax: (619) 293-1440 Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/ Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX SMOKED OUT Supreme Court Bars Marijuana Distribution The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow last week to advocates of marijuana legalization. By a 7-to-1 margin, on an emergency request from the Clinton administration, the justices barred a cannabis "buyers club" in Oakland from dispensing marijuana. The Oakland club claimed it was selling marijuana strictly for "medicinal" use, as permitted by California law under Proposition 215, approved by voters in 1996. Earlier, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had sided with the buyers club, ruling that "medical necessity" is a "legally cognizable defense" to the charge of distributing drugs in violation of federal law. Accordingly, declared Judge Charles Breyer on behalf of the Ninth Circuit, the Oakland cannabis buyers' cooperative was free to provide marijuana to people claiming serious medical conditions: cancer, AIDS or other such diseases. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Ninth Circuit's ruling out of hand, with only Justice John Paul Stevens dissenting and Justice Stephen Breyer recusing himself, because it was his jurist brother who ruled that the Oakland buyers club could sell marijuana. The high court's ruling did not go so far as to ban distribution of marijuana to California patients altogether. Nor did it explicitly rule Proposition 215 unconstitutional. The justices will take up those issues in the fall. Meanwhile, the debate rages on in California about marijuana use for supposedly medicinal purposes. Not helping the debate is the fact that most of the sponsors of Proposition 215, as well its financial supporters -- including the billionaire financier George Soros -- are advocates of drug legalization. The Proposition 215 campaign was an all-too-clever gambit by the drug legalization lobby to get its nose under the public policy tent. If the voters approved marijuana use for medicinal purposes, they reasoned, maybe they might eventually approve marijuana use for nonmedicinal purposes. And so on. But it is still worthwhile to determine, once and for all, whether the benefits of marijuana use for medicinal purposes outweigh the health drawbacks. (For instance, a middle-aged person's chances of having a heart attack increase 500 percent in the first hour after smoking marijuana, according to an American Medical Association report). As it happens, UCSD has just announced a new cannabis study center, funded with $3 million from the Legislature (and millions of federal research dollars to come). The center will conduct not only basic research on medicinal marijuana, but also clinical trials. It is noteworthy that the chief author of Proposition 215, San Francisco cannabis club founder Dennis Peron, is opposed to the UCSD center and its marijuana study. His protests suggest he is wary of what the science will reveal. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D