Pubdate: Tue, 07 Jun 2005
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A01 - Front Page
Copyright: 2005 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Raich
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

A DEFEAT FOR USERS OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

State Laws Are Not Defense, Justices Rule

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the medical marijuana movement yesterday, 
ruling that the federal government can still ban possession of the drug in 
states that have eliminated sanctions for its use in treating symptoms of 
illness.

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled that Congress's constitutional 
authority to regulate the interstate market in drugs, licit or illicit, 
extends to small, homegrown quantities of doctor-recommended marijuana 
consumed under California's Compassionate Use Act, which was adopted by an 
overwhelming majority of voters in 1996.

The ruling does not overturn laws in California and 10 other states, mostly 
in the West, that permit medical use of marijuana. In 2003, Maryland 
reduced the maximum fine for medical users of less than an ounce of the 
drug to $100.

But the ruling does mean that those who try to use marijuana as a medical 
treatment risk legal action by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or 
other federal agencies and that the state laws provide no defense.

Writing for the court majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the case was 
"troubling" because of users' claims that they needed marijuana to 
alleviate physical pain and suffering. But he concluded that the court had 
no choice but to uphold Congress's "firmly established" power to regulate 
"purely local activities . . . that have a substantial effect on interstate 
commerce."

Echoing an argument advanced by the Bush administration, Stevens expressed 
concern that "unscrupulous physicians" might exploit the broadly worded 
California law to divert marijuana into the market for recreational drugs.

The Bush administration, which has been emphasizing marijuana enforcement 
in its anti-drug strategy, hailed the ruling.

"Today's decision marks the end of medical marijuana as a political issue," 
said John P. Walters, President Bush's director of national drug control 
policy. "Our nation has the highest standards and most sophisticated 
institutions in the world for determining the safety and effectiveness of 
medication. Our national medical system relies on proven scientific 
research, not popular opinion."

But California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said that "seriously ill 
Californians will continue to run the risk of arrest and prosecution under 
federal law when they grow and or they use marijuana as medicine."

The ruling, he said, "shows the vast philosophical difference between the 
federal government and Californians on the rights of patients to have 
access to the medicine they need to survive and lead healthier lives."

Supporters of medical marijuana, noting that Stevens wrote that "the voices 
of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls 
of Congress," said the fight over federal drug policy will shift to a new 
battleground.

"The decision highlights the opportunity we have to go to Congress and 
change these laws," said Robert Raich, a lawyer whose wife, Angel Raich, 
was one of two women who had sued to block enforcement of federal marijuana 
laws against them.

A House bill that would forbid the use of federal funds to prosecute 
medical marijuana use in states that permit it was defeated overwhelmingly 
last year but will be voted on again soon, advocates of medical marijuana said.

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision represented a victory for the court's 
supporters of federal power over its proponents of states' rights.

In two cases in the past decade, the court limited Congress's power to make 
laws in the name of regulating interstate commerce, saying that it had 
begun to intrude upon local affairs. Backers of medical marijuana had hoped 
to apply those precedents in this case, Gonzales v. Raich, No. 03-1454.

But Stevens concluded that the court was still bound by a 1942 Supreme 
Court decision that defined interstate commerce broadly to include, under 
certain circumstances, even subsistence wheat farming.

Much modern government regulation exists because of this broad definition 
of interstate commerce, which permitted the court to uphold, as exercises 
of Congress's commerce clause power, laws including New Deal farm controls 
and the ban on racial segregation in hotels and restaurants.

Stevens was joined by the court's three other consistent supporters of 
federal power, Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. 
Breyer. He also picked up the votes of two justices, Antonin Scalia and 
Anthony M. Kennedy, who usually support states' rights.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and 
Clarence Thomas dissented.

Writing for the three, O'Connor noted that she "would not have voted for 
the medical marijuana initiative" in California, but she chided the 
majority for stifling "an express choice by some States, concerned for the 
lives and liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana 
differently."

In a separate dissent, Thomas added that if "the majority is to be taken 
seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes 
drives and potluck suppers throughout the 50 states."

The two California women who sued to block federal marijuana enforcement in 
California are Diane Monson, who was prescribed marijuana for lower-back 
pain, and Raich, who said that she must take the drug at least every two 
hours or else she will lose her appetite and die from a "wasting syndrome" 
whose medical cause is unknown.

"I don't know how to explain it," she said yesterday. "I just can't swallow 
without cannabis."

Monson's home was raided and her marijuana plants seized by federal agents 
in 2002; Raich says she receives the drug free from caregivers and joined 
Monson's lawsuit because she fears that her marijuana could be seized. 
Neither woman has been criminally charged. Raich's suppliers are also in 
the case, as John Does One and Two. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake