SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE MEDICAL MARIJUANA ISSUE

Debate Centers On Distribution To Ailing Patients

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 that 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 is effective in relieving nausea in cancer
patients undergoing chemotherapy, in controlling weight loss in
HIV-positive patients and in reducing pain, she said.

Eight states besides 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
the medical use of marijuana, but Congress blocked the measure from
becoming law.

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

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

Justice Stephen G. Breyer did not participate in the case. His brother, a
federal trial judge in San Francisco, had barred distribution of marijuana
only to have his decision reversed by a federal appeals court.

California's law, approved by the voters in 1996, authorizes the possession
and use of marijuana for medical purposes upon a doctor's recommendation.

The Oakland group said its goal is "to provide seriously ill patients with
safe access to necessary medicine so that these individuals do not have to
resort to the streets."

But the federal Controlled Substances Act includes marijuana among the
drugs whose manufacture and distribution are illegal.

In January 1998, the federal government filed a lawsuit against the Oakland
club, asking a judge to ban it from providing marijuana.

Judge Charles Breyer issued a preliminary order imposing such a ban. But
the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the order, saying the
government did not disprove the club's evidence that the drug was "the only
effective treatment for a large group of seriously ill individuals."

In May, Judge Breyer issued a new order allowing the Oakland group to
provide marijuana to patients who needed it.

In the appeal granted Supreme Court review, Justice Department lawyers said
the appeals court "seriously erred" in deciding the federal law allowed a
medical-necessity defense.

The Oakland club's lawyers said "the voters of California have spoken" in
approving the medical-marijuana measure.

Congress has not explicitly barred a medical necessity defense against the
federal anti-drug law, the lawyers added.