Pubdate: Wed, 13 Aug 2008
Source: Porterville Recorder (CA)
Copyright: 2008 Freedom Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.recorderonline.com/sections/editor-form/
Website: http://www.recorderonline.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2887
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

CALIFORNIA WINS ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW

Fourth District Court of Appeal upholds validity of state law over 
federal supremacy

On July 31 California's Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed that 
California's medical marijuana laws are valid despite the fact that 
federal law does not make any provision for the medicinal use of 
marijuana. This means that state, county and local officials, whether 
they like the laws put in place by the people through the initiative 
process and later the Legislature, are duty-bound the implement those laws.

For years various officials who don't approve of the laws that give 
bona fide patients the right to use, possess and grow marijuana have 
argued that because federal law places marijuana on Schedule I (which 
prohibits any use, including medical) under the 1974 Controlled 
Substances Act (CSA), that the California law is invalid. The 
doctrine of "federal supremacy," they have argued, doesn't allow 
states to have less restrictive laws.

That argument was always disingenuous or worse. Our federal 
Constitution created a system in which the states have wide latitude 
to take different legal approaches to various issues, explicitly to 
allow the states to be "laboratories of democracy" and try different 
approaches, with other states free to study the results and emulate 
them or not. Only on rare occasions does Congress declare that the 
feds have "occupied the field" in a way that precludes the states 
from trying different approaches.

After going back to the original language of the CSA, the Fourth 
District court concluded that the law not only did not declare that 
it was supreme over the states, but that it "signifies Congress's 
intent to maintain the power of states to elect to serve as a 
laboratory in the trial of social and economic experiments without 
risk to the rest of the country ..."

This was so obvious that the court rejected out of hand the claim 
that Prop. 215, passed by the voters in 1996, was invalid due to 
conflict with federal law. It then turned to SB 420, which among 
other things set up a voluntary patient identification card system 
and requires counties to do the initial screening of patients who 
want such a card so the state health department can issue them. San 
Diego County, joined by San Bernardino County, had filed suit to have 
that law invalidated, not only because it conflicted with federal law 
but because the legislature had changed the original law, and only 
voters can change a law originally passed by the voters.

The court ruled that SB 420 was designed (as its sponsors said at the 
time) not to change Prop. 215, but to implement and clarify it. 
Therefore the ID card system, since it is voluntary and doesn't take 
any rights from patients who prefer not to get an ID card, is valid 
and counties (which under California law are subdivisions of the 
state) are obligated to follow it.

It would be a waste of time and taxpayers' money for San Diego to 
appeal this decision to the California Supreme Court, which recently 
declined to hear an appeal from another case that raised 
state-federal issues. San Diego County and all the officials who have 
been blatantly or subtly dragging their feet are on notice that their 
legal obligation is to follow state law, not federal law, when it 
comes to medical marijuana. It's time for the foot-dragging to end.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom