Pubdate: Wed, 08 Jun 2005
Source: Manila Times (Philippines)
Copyright: 2005, The Manila Times
Contact:  http://www.manilatimes.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/921
Author: AP
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Raich
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/ashcroft.htm (Ashcroft, John)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/walters.htm (Walters, John)

MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENTS CAN BE PROSECUTED

US Supreme Court Ruling

WASHINGTON: People who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend
it to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws, the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday, overriding medical marijuana statutes
in 10 states.

The court's 6-3 decision was filled with sympathy for two seriously
ill California women who brought the case, but the majority agreed
that federal agents may arrest even sick people who use the drug as
well as the people who grow pot for them.

Justice John Paul Stevens, an 85-year-old cancer survivor, said the
court was not passing judgment on the potential medical benefits of
marijuana, and he noted "the troubling facts" in the case. However, he
said the Constitution allows federal regulation home-grown marijuana
as interstate commerce.

The Bush administration has taken a hard stand against state medical
marijuana laws, but it was unclear how it would respond to the new
prosecutorial power. Justice Department spokesman John Nowacki would
not say whether prosecutors would pursue cases against individual users.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the court's
"overreaching stifles an express choice by some states, concerned for
the lives and liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana
differently."

The women who brought the case expressed defiance. "I'm just going to
keep doing what I'm doing. I don't really have a choice but to,
because if I stop using cannabis, I would die," said Angel Raich of
Oakland, California, who suffers from ailments including scoliosis, a
brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain. She says she smokes
marijuana every few hours.

Diane Monson, an accountant who lives near Oroville, California, has
degenerative spine disease and grows her own marijuana plants. "I'm
going to have to be prepared to be arrested," she said.

The ruling does not strike down California's law, or similar ones in
Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and
Washington state. Besides those states, Arizona permits marijuana
prescriptions but has never instituted a program to support them. In
Maryland, people accused of violating state possession laws can
present evidence to a judge of a medicinal use of the drug; the judge
could then lower the punishment to a $100 (euro81.5) fine.

However, Monday's ruling may hurt efforts to pass laws in other states
because the federal government's prosecution authority trumps states'
wishes. California's law, passed by voters in 1996, allows people to
grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's
recommendation. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in a California case
that the federal government could prosecute distributors despite their
claim that the activity was protected by medical necessity.

Two years later the justices rejected a Bush administration appeal
that sought power to punish doctors for recommending the drug to sick
patients. That case, too, was from California.

John Walters, director of national drug control policy, defended the
government's ban. "Science and research have not determined that
smoking marijuana is safe or effective," he said.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Monday that "people
shouldn't panic . . . there aren't going to be many changes."

Local and state officers handle nearly all marijuana prosecutions and
must still follow any state laws that protect patients.

The government has arrested more than 60 people in medical marijuana
raids since September 2001, according to the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Still, even supporters say it is
unlikely Congress would pass a law allowing physicians to prescribe
marijuana.

O'Connor was joined in her dissent by two other states' rights
advocates: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence
Thomas. While conservatives may not necessarily support medical
marijuana, they have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years.

O'Connor, who like Rehnquist has had cancer, 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 inone's own home
for one's own medicinal use."

Thomas said the ruling was so broad "the federal government may now
regulate quilting bees, clothes drives and potluck suppers throughout
the 50 states." The case was hatched when Monson's backyard crop of
six marijuana plants was seized by federal agents in 2002. She and
Raich 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.

They claimed protection under the Constitution, which says Congress
may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it
involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state borders.
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