WASTED MOTION AGAINST MEDICAL MARIJUANA

States' approval of medical use of marijuana has advanced appreciably the
past few years.

Nine states have now adopted "medically necessary'' use standards, most
under detailed prescription guidelines for physicians. But neither the
explicit message of citizens' approval for medical marijuana use in
statewide referendums, nor more traditional states' rights prerogatives,
have deterred the Clinton administration's Justice Department. It's still
pursuing its 3-year-old effort to ban prescription cannabis.

The administration has just persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its
challenge of a medical-marijuana use statute in California, one of the
first states to adopt such a measure.

The court's agreement presents it with a core conflict.

The conservatives on the court most inclined to oppose marijuana for
medical purposes also are most inclined to respect states' rights.

The court's liberals have the reverse problem.

They may be more sympathetic to medical cannabis, but if it's allowed by a
state law that conflicts with federal law, they're more likely to step in
on the side of the administration.

In any event, the government's legal quest to strike down the state's laws
is wrong-headed. It ignores, without specific reason, the argument that
medical necessity is a legitimate and widely respected exception to law --
hence the legal use of opiates and otherwise illegal narcotics in many
common drugs and painkillers. The Justice Department seems instead to take
its fervor from the notion that any use of cannabis, however justified,
will spur illegal use, or possibly wider acceptance of pot.

The former is untenable, and the latter is unrealistic. Current manufacture
of medicinal drugs and regulations governing their distribution and
prescription offer pretty convincing evidence that marijuana can be legally
grown and distributed without inviting criminal enterprise. Indeed, tens of
thousands of individuals are now believed to be receiving prescription
marijuana from legal growing cooperatives in Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii,
Oregon, Washington, Colorado, California, Maine and, soon, Nevada, which
approved medical use of marijuana in a referendum earlier this month.

The notion of medical use entrenching cultural acceptance of marijuana begs
the question: Will preventing its medical use deter illegal marijuana use?
No, it won't. Just as alcohol was widely available during prohibition,
marijuana has been widely available for decades, particularly since the
1960s. Most any high school student here will admit that they have peers
who smoke marijuana, and that they could get some in 30 minutes if they
wanted to.

In fact, the Justice Department is so entrenched in the nation's
ill-conceived and ineffective drug laws, and costly criminalization of
personal use, that it simply will not accept evidence of medical efficacy
of marijuana.

Yet a number of studies document legitimate medical uses, such as reducing
nausea from cancer chemotherapy treatments.

The Justice Department should drop its challenge of well-debated state laws
and focus instead on helping revise criminal drug statutes to emphasize
civil penalties for personal use. Allowing medical use of cannabis to
proceed unhindered in states that approve it might promote wider, more
effective drug treatment studies as well. The Justice Department should be
interested in that sort of outcome, not more futile, and needlessly
punitive, prohibitionist responses.