Pubdate: Thu, 16 Oct 2003
Source: Trenton Times, The (NJ)
1066293363218483.xml?times?nex
Copyright: 2003 The Times
Contact:  http://www.njo.com/times/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/458
Cited: Drug Enforcement Administration ( www.dea.gov )
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/ocbc.htm (Oakland Cannabis Court Case)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Conant (Walters v. Conant)

TIME TO LEGALIZE MEDICAL POT

A quiet victory for compassion and common sense was won this week when the 
U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider an appeals court ruling that the 
federal government cannot punish or threaten doctors who recommend 
marijuana to their ill patients.

It means that doctors in California and six other Western states where the 
substance is approved for such medical uses as relief of pain and 
chemotherapy-induced nausea may discuss the subject freely with their 
patients without fear of losing their federal licenses to prescribe drugs.

After California voters approved their law in a 1996 referendum, the 
Clinton administration warned doctors that if they did what the state law 
authorized them to do, they would jeopardize their licenses.

The Bush administration continued that policy.

When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the warnings violated 
both the free speech rights of doctors and the "principles of federalism," 
the Bush Justice Department sought a reversal from the Supreme Court. The 
court now has declined without comment to accept the case.

One of the Ninth Circuit's most conservative judges, Alex Kozinski, wrote 
in a concurring opinion that the matter was governed by several recent 
Supreme Court rulings upholding states' rights.

Although the Bush administration itself professes a devotion to the 
states'-rights principle, in this case it allowed its anti-drug ideology to 
trump that devotion.

Unfortunately, federal law still makes the production, sale and possession 
of marijuana illegal under all circumstances, even when the user seeks not 
a high but relief from symptoms related to some debilitating sickness.

The Supreme Court in 2001 ruled that this prohibition allows no exception 
for medical purposes.

Operating under this writ of authority, but in a bizarre distortion of 
priorities, Attorney General John Ashcroft took time out from the war on 
terrorism and other appropriate tasks to order Drug Enforcement 
Administration raids on California farms growing medical marijuana and 
treatment centers where hundreds of seriously ill patients, most of them 
with cancer or AIDS, were obtaining the drug as prescribed by their doctors.

A total of nine states, including Maine and Maryland, have legalized the 
use of the drug, under tight guidelines, for appropriate medical purposes. 
In Canada, patients can grow pot for medical use with a doctor's approval, 
or get it free from the government. It's long past time for Congress and 
the White House to show similar concern for human suffering and amend the 
Controlled Substances Act to provide a medical-necessity exception to the 
marijuana ban.

Drug warriors blinded by their own ideology argue that such a step would 
put the country on the slippery slope to legalization of drugs, but that is 
untrue.

Statutory language can be carefully crafted to ensure that marijuana is 
made available only to those with a legitimate medical need for it. As 
Times/Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "Compare this to morphine.

We don't allow morphine on the street but we permit it in the doctor's 
arsenal for the treatment of pain. Imagine the uproar if we made morphine 
illegal.

There is no logic in treating marijuana differently."