Pubdate: Mon, 21 May 2001
Source: Time Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2001 Time Inc
Contact:  http://www.time.com/time/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/451
Author:  Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles

A SETBACK FOR MEDIPOT

Sales were strong on Santa Monica Boulevard last week. Prices were neatly 
posted; customers paid by credit card; computers tracked inventory; a 
Better Business Bureau plaque gleamed behind the counter.

On the lounge TV, a video showed Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca 
praising the place: "A great success...things are done properly and people 
who need services are getting those services."

But the success and services of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center 
and similar medical-marijuana distributors across the country could soon be 
history. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision declared 
that illness is no excuse for legalizing marijuana--not even to ease the 
suffering of patients with cancer, AIDS or other life-threatening diseases. 
The folks on Santa Monica Boulevard, however respectable, are committing a 
federal crime as they collect baggies of Maude's Mighty Moss ("large and 
luscious reddish green buds, easy to break and roll," $18 a gram) and Adobe 
("compressed green bud, fresh and tasty, with seeds and stems," $4 a gram).

The court's foray into the medipot conflict did little to resolve the 
highly politicized issue.

Justice Clarence Thomas' opinion was narrow.

It affirmed the government's power to shut down a cannabis cooperative in 
Oakland, Calif., but stopped short of invalidating laws passed by nine 
states allowing marijuana for medical use. Thomas' opinion skirted the 
states'-rights issue at the heart of the case--does California have the 
right to legalize medipot?--and a concurring opinion from three liberal 
Justices, led by John Paul Stevens, chided the conservative majority for 
"overbroad language...given the importance of showing respect for sovereign 
states." Stevens also suggested that while medical necessity can't be 
invoked by a mass distributor, it might still be a defense against 
prosecution of an individual--"a seriously ill patient for whom there is no 
other means of avoiding starvation or extraordinary suffering."

That's a good description of the 880 members of the Los Angeles 
cooperative, three-quarters of whom have AIDS. The rest suffer from cancer, 
multiple sclerosis or other diseases, and all have marijuana prescriptions 
fromm licensed physicians. Leanne Orgen, 46, an insurance broker with liver 
cancer, buys pot-laced chocolate-chunk brownies--a "miracle drug" for 
chemotherapy-induced nausea, she says. Jeffrey Farrington, 32, who has 
glaucoma, explains that if he stops smoking marijuana, which relieves 
ocular pressure, he loses more than 7 ft. of vision daily. "If they shut us 
down," he says, "I'll go blind and I'll watch my friends die of AIDS."

Two years ago, the Institute of Medicine concluded that marijuana has 
potential therapeutic value.

Polls show nearly three-quarters of Americans favor medical-marijuana use, 
and juries are increasingly reluctant to convict sick people for 
possession. Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii have set up state registries for 
medipot users; Colorado, California, Nevada and Maine are debating similar 
moves.

Such grassroots enthusiasm carries little weight with drug warriors, who 
dispute the scientific data and argue that marijuana leads to hard narcotics.

In an interview with TIME last week, Attorney General John Ashcroft praised 
the Supreme Court decision. "We can't function well as a country if each 
state makes its own rules about what's available health-care-wise," he 
argued. "If Congress wants to exempt various people from the laws of this 
country, it's their duty."

That's unlikely.

But neither the Justice Department nor the DEA has said whether the court 
ruling will cause them to mount a new offensive against medical-marijuana 
clinics.

And as a practical matter, most individual pot infractions fall under state 
and local jurisdiction, and an increasing number of local law-enforcement 
officers are refusing to prosecute medipot cases.

Still, Scott Imler, president of the L.A. center and an epileptic who 
smokes weed to control his seizures, fears the worst. "If they march in 
here with storm troopers and seize the building, I can't imagine it would 
be politically popular," he says. "But maybe they don't care."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth