SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA USE

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court entered the debate over medical marijuana
Monday, agreeing to decide whether the drug can be provided to patients out
of "medical necessity" even though federal law makes its distribution a crime.

The justices said they will hear the Clinton administration's effort to bar
a California group from providing the drug to seriously ill patients for
pain and nausea relief.

A lower court decision allowing the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative to
distribute the drug "threatens the government's ability to enforce the
federal drug laws," government lawyers said.

But the California group says that for some patients, marijuana is "the
only medicine that has proven effective in relieving their conditions or
symptoms."

The group's lawyer, Annette P. Carnegie, said Monday the federal Controlled
Substances Act does not prohibit the distribution of marijuana for medical
reasons.

"Those choices, we believe, are best made by physicians and not by the
government," she said. Marijuana has been effective in relieving nausea in
cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, limiting weight loss in
HIV-positive patients and in reducing pain, she said.

Eight states in addition to California have medical-marijuana laws in place
or approved by voters: Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, Washington,
Nevada and Colorado. Residents of Washington, D.C., voted in 1998 to allow
medical marijuana, but Congress blocked the measure.

Justice Department lawyers said Congress has decided that marijuana has "no
currently accepted medical use."

In August, the Supreme Court barred the California group from distributing
marijuana while the government pursued its appeal.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer didn't participate in the case. His brother, a
federal judge in California, previously barred marijuana distribution only
to have his decision reversed by an appeals court.

California's law authorizes the possession and use of marijuana for medical
purposes upon a doctor's recommendation.