Pubdate: Sat, 03 Jan 2015
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Bob Egelko

FEDS SAY MARIJUANA STILL POSES A DANGER

U.S. Attorney Fights New Court Challenge

Two weeks after President Obama signed legislation prohibiting 
federal interference with state medical marijuana laws, his 
administration has told a federal judge in Sacramento that pot is 
still a dangerous drug with no medical value.

The U.S. attorney's office, representing Obama's Justice Department, 
made the argument in a court filing Wednesday opposing a challenge to 
the long-standing federal law that classifies marijuana as a Schedule 
One drug along with heroin, LSD and ecstasy - substances that have a 
high potential for abuse and no safe medical use.

While there may be "some dispute among doctors as to whether 
marijuana is medicine," there is ample evidence to support the 
government's conclusion that "this psychoactive, addictive drug is 
not accepted as safe for medical use at this time, even with medical 
supervision," Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Broderick wrote.

Lawyers for alleged marijuana growers countered that the government 
presented no credible evidence that marijuana carries the potential 
hazards of legal substances, like tobacco and alcohol, and that the 
administration's position makes even less sense in light of the law 
Obama signed Dec. 16.

That law, part of an overall government financing bill for the year, 
bars the federal government from spending money to prevent California 
and 21 other states from "implementing their own state laws that 
authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical 
marijuana."

Congress can't rationally "justify a finding that marijuana has no 
medical benefits while demanding that the distribution of medical 
marijuana be protected from federal government interference," said 
Zenia Gilg, lawyer for one of seven defendants charged with growing 
marijuana on national forest land in Trinity and Tehama counties.

The written arguments come two months after a hearing ordered by U.S. 
District Judge Kimberly Mueller over prosecutors' objections. She 
said defense lawyers had presented expert declarations showing "new 
scientific and medical information" raising questions about the 
continued classification of marijuana in Schedule One, which 
effectively outlaws its possession nationwide.

At the hearing, the defendants called doctors and researchers who 
asserted marijuana's medical benefits and relative safety. The 
administration presented its own expert, a Harvard professor and 
former drug official in the George W. Bush administration who said 
pot is both addictive and dangerous.

In Wednesday's filing, the Obama administration said a single 
expert's testimony is enough to show the legally required "rational 
basis" for marijuana's current classification. But Broderick, the 
government's lawyer, also said that "most mainstream physicians agree 
that marijuana is a dangerous drug," citing the American Psychiatric 
Association's observation that pot use can have "serious side effects."

Although some ingredients of marijuana have government-approved 
medicinal use, Broderick wrote, there are no adequate long-term 
studies attesting to the medical value or safety of marijuana. In 
fact, he said, "there is no standard, 'medical' marijuana," and 
neither patients nor their doctors know which substances they're ingesting.

Gilg argued that there are many such studies, but none the government 
will accept because it has refused to release federally approved 
marijuana supplies to independent researchers.
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