Pubdate: Sun, 25 Mar 2001
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Section: A, Pg 1
Website: http://www.chron.com/
Address: Viewpoints Editor, P.O. Box 4260 Houston, Texas 77210-4260
Email:  http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html
Copyright: 2001 Houston Chronicle
Fax: (713) 220-3575
Author: Patty Reinert

POTFUL OF CONTROVERSY

Supreme Court Weighs Drug Law - Medical Marijuana Puts States On The Front 
Line Of Federal War

SAN FRANCISCO - It was Friday afternoon, his work was done, and Keith Vines 
had made his decision.

The former Air Force captain turned prosecutor, who had prided himself on 
being a foot soldier in his country's war on drugs, was leaving his office 
and heading downtown to score some pot.

"It was . . .  awkward," he said, recalling the day in 1993 that he walked 
into a quasi-legal cannabis club holding a note from his doctor and walked 
out clutching a baggie of marijuana.

Sitting on his couch last week, surrounded by paintings and photographs of 
family and friends, Vines, 50, said the choice he made was life-and-death. 
"Either try this medicine and save your life or waste away and die," he 
said. "I chose the first."

Today, 4 1/2 years after California voters passed a referendum legalizing 
the cultivation and possession of marijuana for medical use, Vines pays a 
delivery service to bring the medicine to his door.

He smokes when he has to, to stimulate his appetite to help digest up to 20 
pills a day to combat AIDS and to stave off the wasting that previously 
pulled 50 pounds off his frame in just a few months.

What he does is legal under California law but illegal under federal law. 
Vines, who worked as a felony drug prosecutor in the San Francisco district 
attorney's office, cringes at his reputation as "pot's poster boy."

He is among thousands of desperately ill patients in California and 
elsewhere who believe they live today because their states legalized 
medical access to marijuana.

The federal government's studies lend some credence to their claims, but 
prosecutors citing federal law and politicians fearful of appearing soft on 
drugs are determined to silence them.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will make its first foray into the 
medical-marijuana debate, hearing arguments in a case the federal 
government filed in hopes of shutting down the Oakland Cannabis Cooperative 
and five other California marijuana distributors.

At issue is whether patients and their suppliers can claim "medical 
necessity" to shield them from prosecution on federal drug charges.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, brother of Supreme Court Justice 
Stephen Breyer, originally sided with the government. But the 9th U.S. 
Circuit Court of Appeals overruled, forcing him to carve out a narrow 
exemption in the law for seriously ill patients who have exhausted other 
treatment options.

The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted a stay of the 
9th U.S. Circuit's decision pending the outcome of the case.

Because of his brother's involvement, Stephen Breyer will not hear the 
case. A decision by the other eight justices, expected by July, could help 
determine whether federal drug laws should trump medical-marijuana laws 
passed in California and nine other states and contemplated in many more.

On one side of the case are government lawyers and drug-war advocates who 
say state laws easing marijuana restrictions are based on faulty science 
and undermine the nation's fight against drug traffickers. They argue that 
smoking marijuana is dangerous and addictive, and that the real goal of the 
medical-marijuana movement is legalizing the drug for recreational use.

On the other side are patients such as Vines, their doctors and those who 
risk going to prison to provide them with what they consider a safe and 
effective drug, as well as drug-war opponents who believe the government 
has spent too much money and effort on a losing battle.

Some doctors have embraced marijuana to treat pain and nausea, a 
debilitating side effect of chemotherapy and other treatments for cancer 
and AIDS. Many also tout its benefits in treating glaucoma and in 
stimulating the appetite of people who find it difficult to eat enough.

Spurred by research and patient testimonials, a growing number of state 
legislatures have attempted to pass "compassionate use" laws, allowing 
access to the drug on a doctor's recommendation. And where legislative 
efforts have failed, voters have forced the issue through referendum.

Californians passed Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, in 1996 
after then-Gov. Pete Wilson twice vetoed medical-marijuana bills. Voters in 
Oregon, Alaska, Washington, Maine, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Arkansas and 
Washington, D.C., have jumped on board, and last year, Hawaii's state 
legislature became the first to pass a medical-marijuana law.

Legislation is pending in many other states, including Texas, where 
lawmakers are considering a bill by Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, a former 
prosecutor.

"If people suffering from cancer, epilepsy or MS are in pain and this could 
give them some relief, it's only appropriate that they should have a chance 
to talk about it with their doctors and allow their doctors to look 
seriously at how marijuana may help improve their health," said Shelton 
Green, Keel's legislative aide.

Green said the bill has a realistic chance of passing the Texas House this 
session. But the inevitable end-of-session time crunch threatens to prevent 
its hearing in the Senate before the May 28 adjournment, putting the issue 
off until 2003.

In California, the medical-marijuana movement has found unlikely spokesmen 
in Vines and Jeff Jones, a 26-year-old Christian conservative and native of 
South Dakota. Jones, who favors navy pinstriped suits and says he does not 
smoke marijuana, moved to California and opened the Oakland Cannabis 
Cooperative after watching his father die of kidney cancer.

Jones has befriended police and city officials who have embraced his co-op 
as a city service provider.

The back room of the co-op, across the street from Leo's Pharmacy and down 
the way from the Christian Science Reading Room in downtown Oakland, 
resembles a small driver's-license bureau where potential patients show 
letters from their doctors, fill out paperwork and pose for photos. 
Twenty-five dollars buys them a membership and an ID card that will help 
police distinguish them from recreational pot users.

Until its recent legal troubles, the co-op distributed marijuana to more 
than 5,000 members. Now it offers classes to teach patients where to safely 
purchase the plant or how to grow their own.

Out front in the hemp store, clerks instruct patients on the use of rolling 
papers and marijuana pipes as shoppers wander in from the street to browse 
through racks of hemp clothing, marijuana cookbooks, vegan hemp lip balm, 
sun catchers with pot-leaf motifs and "While you were out getting stoned . 
. . " message pads.

Jones, whose database contains the names of more than 1,000 doctors who 
have recommended marijuana for their patients, said neither he nor they 
intended to break the law.

"But I will keep doing this until they jail me," he said. "State law says 
we can do this. We just need a little bit of tolerance (in the federal law) 
so we can get this medicine to people who really need it. I am devastated 
that our government is so strung up on the political issue while people are 
suffering and dying."

Under the 1970 federal Controlled Substances Act, drugs are classified on 
one of five "schedules." Congress has designated marijuana as Schedule I, 
the most restrictive category, indicating that it has a high potential for 
abuse, has no currently accepted medical use and is unsafe.

No one may distribute a Schedule I drug except as part of a research 
project registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration and approved by 
the Food and Drug Administration. The federal government currently operates 
one such project, the Compassionate Investigative New Drug program, which 
has supplied marijuana to eight test patients for years.

The results of that program prompted the DEA's chief administrative-law 
judge, Francis Young, to rule in 1988 that marijuana is "one of the safest 
therapeutically active substances known." Urging that marijuana be 
reclassified to Schedule II, the same as prescription painkillers like 
codeine or morphine, Young said it would be "unreasonable, arbitrary and 
capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the 
benefits of (marijuana)."

Medical-marijuana proponents also point to a 1999 government-commissioned 
study by the Institute of Medicine, which concluded that marijuana can help 
ease pain and nausea, with few side effects.

Federal prosecutors aren't impressed. U.S. Solicitor General Seth Waxman 
argues in his Supreme Court brief that any erosion of the law 
"significantly undermines the effectiveness of the CSA (Controlled 
Substances Act) and threatens the government's ability to enforce an Act of 
Congress that is central to combating illicit drug trafficking."

President Bush, who says he is a strong advocate of states' rights, has 
remained quiet on the issue.

But government lawyers and their supporters insist marijuana is not good 
medicine.

David Evans, a New Jersey attorney who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief 
for Drug Free America's Institute on Global Drug Policy, argues that 
marijuana advocates should not be allowed to bypass a federal drug-approval 
process that has worked to keep patients safe for more than 100 years.

"A referendum is good. It expresses the will of the people; it's democracy 
in action and all that stuff," he said. "But suppose a pharmaceutical 
company wanted to sell a drug like thalidomide," which was taken off the 
market after pregnant women taking the drug gave birth to severely deformed 
children.

"What if, instead of going through our drug-approval process, they said, 
'Let's go get some pregnant women and put them on TV, launch a 
multimillion-dollar ad campaign.' Suppose we set our medical approval 
process on that," Evans said. "Would you feel very confident if you went 
into a pharmacy to buy some medicine?"

Evans and lawyers with the Family Research Council, which also filed a 
brief supporting the government, suggest that rather than smoking illegal 
marijuana, patients should try marinol, a pill available by prescription 
that is made from THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana.

But many doctors and pharmaceutical researchers side with the patients, 
saying smoked marijuana, while it has its risks, is more effective than 
marinol, working faster and better and in many cases requiring a smaller dose.

Vines tried marinol first but found that it left him feeling stoned or 
sleepy, preventing him from concentrating, while doing nothing to increase 
his appetite.

"With just one or two puffs of smoked marijuana, I can eat," he said. "The 
effect is immediate, and I don't have the side effects. I'm not doing this 
for recreation. I'm doing it so I can stay alive."

Vines points out that unlike aspirin, which is considered relatively benign 
and is available over the counter, marijuana is not known to have caused a 
single death by overdose. He contends that the latest research funded by 
the government indicates that the drug is not addictive. Nor is it any 
longer considered a "gateway" to serious drug abuse.

Daniel Abrahamson, a California lawyer with the Lindesmith Center who filed 
a friend-of-the-court brief for the American Public Health Association in 
support of the cannabis clubs, calls the "slippery slope toward 
legalization" argument "simply absurd."

"Morphine can be prescribed legally by a doctor, and nobody is arguing that 
that will lead to the legalization of heroin," he said. "We're talking 
about doctors who are trusted with some of the most dangerous medications 
in the world. They should also be trusted to recommend marijuana."
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