Pubdate: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 Source: Register-Guard, The (OR) Copyright: 2003 The Register-Guard Contact: http://www.registerguard.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/362 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/angel+raich Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/ashcroft.htm (Ashcroft, John) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal) CLEARING THE HAZE: APPEALS COURT RULES FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW Conservatives traditionally have argued for strict limits on federal authority. The Bush administration has turned that tradition on its head with its recent efforts to use federal law to overturn the laws of Oregon and the eight other states that allow their ailing citizens to use marijuana for medical purposes. On Tuesday, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a welcome blow to the habitually overreaching Bush administration by ruling that federal drug laws do not trump state medical marijuana laws. The decision marks the second recent court defeat for the federal government in its battle against the medical-marijuana movement. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 9th Circuit ruling that barred federal prosecutors from threatening to revoke the prescription rights of doctors who approved marijuana use for their patients. Is anyone in the White House or Justice Department reading these rulings? Doing so would persuade them to give up this fight. The latest case involves a seizure last year by federal drug agents of marijuana used by a number of people throughout California, including Diane Monson of Oroville, who uses marijuana to treat chronic and severe back pain. Monson and Angel M. Raich, an Oakland, Calif., woman who uses marijuana for an inoperable brain tumor, sued U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in federal court. Both women, who are using marijuana at the recommendation of their doctors, asked the court to bar the federal government from confiscating their marijuana or taking punitive action against them. The court panel's majority sided with the two women, stating that "intrastate, noncommercial cultivation, possession and use of marijuana for personal medical purposes on the advice of a physician is, in fact, different from drug trafficking.'' The federal government, the justices added, has the power to pass laws against trafficking in drugs, but ``the cultivation, possession and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes and not for exchange or distribution is not properly characterized as commercial or economic activity.'' The two-member majority of the panel based its ruling on two U.S. Supreme Court decisions about the principles of federalism. In both cases, one involving a federal law banning guns in schools and another allowing federal prosecutions of violent crimes against women, the high court struck down federal laws on the grounds that they overstepped the federal government's constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce. Despite these canons of conservatism, it seems unlikely that either the Bush or Ashcroft will now abandon their misguided quest to overturn state medical marijuana laws. Congress, however, could easily end this needless conflict. Under federal law, marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance - a drug that has no accepted medical use. Other Schedule 1 drugs include crack cocaine or heroin. Congress should reclassify marijuana as a Schedule 2 drug. like morphine - one that is still illegal, but that has recognized medical uses. Such a sensible move by Congress would leave states free to decide for themselves whether to allow marijuana to be used for medical purposes without interference by an overreaching and meddlesome federal government. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin