POT BUST

Congress should give states leeway to allow medicinal marijuana
use

The U.S. Supreme Court really had no choice this week but to rule
against proponents of marijuana use for medicinal purposes.

Federal law is explicit: Pot is a Schedule 1 controlled substance --
illegal anywhere, at any time, in any amount -- and no exception is
made for its use as a medical treatment. So even in states that allow
patients with cancer and other serious illnesses to smoke marijuana
for relief, anyone caught manufacturing, distributing or possessing
the weed can still be charged with a federal crime.

The high court, with its 8-0 decision, was right; it's federal law
that's wrong. Congress should waste no time before acknowledging the
possible medical benefits of marijuana and carving out an exception to
the Controlled Substances Act that leaves such decisions with the
individual states.

The science on medicinal marijuana is admittedly skimpy; the Catch-22
is that pot's highly restricted status means that not even researchers
are generally allowed access to the substance. But anecdotal evidence
of marijuana's medical benefits is substantial. A 1999 National
Academy of Sciences report documented marijuana's value to certain
patients. Thousands of individuals nationwide, including many who have
never before used illicit drugs, are smoking pot to lessen the painful
symptoms of multiple sclerosis, alleviate the nausea caused by
chemotherapy and provide relief for the agony of late-stage AIDS.

Whether such relief has a sound physiological basis or is simply the
result of pot's euphoric high doesn't really matter. The patient feels
better, and society doesn't suffer. Whatever their individual feelings
about the war on drugs, most people understand that it makes no sense
to wage war on sick and elderly people. Which is why voters in
Arizona, Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and
Washington, and lawmakers in Hawaii, have all approved medicinal
marijuana use.

With the Supreme Court's ruling, however, patients in those states may
find it impossible to obtain the pot they need. Although federal
prosecution of individual drug users is virtually unheard of, many
patients lack the ability to grow their own marijuana plants and must
turn elsewhere for a supply. And the feds love nothing more than to
bust a "dealer": The case decided by the court this week was aimed
specifically at closing down so-called cannabis clubs in California,
which provided pot to patients under physician supervision.

The states and the people are way ahead of the Beltway crowd on this
issue. Members of Congress tend to shy away from any action that might
be characterized as soft on drugs. But allowing states to decide for
themselves whether to allow medicinal marijuana use has less to do
with drugs than with compassion and common sense.