Pubdate: Wed, 8 Jun 2005
Source: Journal Times, The (Racine, WI)
Copyright: 2005 The Journal Times
Contact:  http://www.journaltimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1659
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Raich (Gonzales v. Raich)

HIGH COURT MUFFS RULING ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

In an unfortunate and hardly compassionate ruling Monday the U.S.
Supreme Court sided with the Bush administration and ruled that
federal authorities can prosecute sick people who smoke marijuana on
doctors' orders.

Sigh.

We would hope that the ruling doesn't open the door for zealous
prosecutors to chase down and jail non-threatening people like Angel
Raich - an Oakland woman who was one of the two litigants in the case.
Reich suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, pain and
fatigue. She said she was partially paralyzed before starting to smoke
marijuana to ease her pain.

Or the other litigant, Diane Monson, of Oroville, Cal., has a
degenerative spine disease and grows her own marijuana plants in her
back yard.

We're talking about a couple of women fighting chronic pain under the
advice of their doctors - not international drug cartels moving
massive amounts of drugs around the country to push into school yards.

Yet that's the hook that provided the ruling in this case. The high
court upheld the prosecution of medical marijuana users under the
federal Controlled Substances Act. Under the Constitution, Congress
and the federal government may pass laws regulating state economic
activities if it involves commerce that crosses state lines. Yet in
this specific case, the marijuana in question was homegrown, involved
no charge and didn't cross state lines.

Ten states (not Wisconsin) have authorized the medicinal use of
marijuana under a doctor's orders. Advocates of medical marijuana have
argued it can be effective in the treatment of glaucoma and arthritis
and can be beneficial in the treatment of pain for AIDS sufferers or
in mitigating the nausea that results from chemotherapy treatment for
cancers.

On Monday, the justices sniffed at those painful medical ailments.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, suggested the two
women take their case to Congress if they want the law changed.

"Perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the
democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these
respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress," he wrote.
Hardly a compassionate recommendation after noting that Raich's doctor
said if she had to forego cannabis treatment Raich would suffer
excruciating pain and it "could very well prove fatal."

Justice Stephen Breyer joined in and suggested the women should try to
get the Food and Drug Administration to reclassify pot as having some
medical value.

The voice for common sense was that of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,
writing for the minority, who said the issue should be left up to each
state.

The high court, she said, was going too far to support "making it a
federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for
one's own medicinal use."

The practical effect of the ruling remains to be seen since state and
local officers typically handle 99 percent of marijuana prosecutions
and are subject to state laws that protect patients with doctors'
authorizations.

We would hope that federal agents would have better things to do than
put backyard medical marijuana high on their enforcement list. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake