Pubdate: Mon, 21 May 2001
Source: CNN (US Web)
Copyright: 2001 Cable News Network, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.cnn.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/65
Author: Margot Roosevelt - Los Angeles

A SETBACK FOR MEDIPOT

Note: After a Supreme Court decision, distributors of medical marijuana 
fear a federal shutdown.

Sales were strong at 7494 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."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom