HIGHEST AMERICAN COURT REJECTS MEDICAL MARIJUANA

LOS ANGELES -- Until yesterday, the unmarked office above an
auto-parts dealership on a busy Los Angeles street was a singular
kind of pharmacy. Patients suffering from AIDS, glaucoma or similar
ailments would enter with a doctor's note and walk out with small,
legal bundles of marijuana.

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that pot pharmacies,
including the unmarked office of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource
Center, can no longer legally grow and distribute medicinal marijuana.

The decision will inevitably affect suffering Americans, many of whom
vowed yesterday to keep using pot.

But the court's unanimous ruling also opens a sharp divide between
the United States, which strictly considers marijuana an illegal
narcotic, and Canada, where the federal government has recently
created new regulations to legalize and regulate it as a prescription
drug.

The ruling ends a five-year period during which pot was legally
distributed in California, Arizona and a half-dozen other states that
passed plebiscites allowing the use of so-called medicinal marijuana.

Pot pharmacies, usually known as cannabis buyers' clubs, popped up in
these states' cities and some doctors issued prescriptions to
patients suffering from arthritis, anorexia or stress.

In a unanimous decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court
ruled that patients with prescriptions cannot be exempted from U.S.
drug laws, which classify marijuana as being in the same class as
cocaine and heroin.

"Congress has made a determination that marijuana has no medical
benefits worthy of an exception," Judge Thomas wrote in his decision.

The case, the United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers Co-operative,
was brought in 1998 against six marijuana distributors in the San
Francisco Bay area. The federal government sought an injunction
shutting them down, but the distributors' lawyers argued successfully
that drug laws leave room for medical applications.

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision overturned that interpretation,
exempting only U.S. government drug research.

This puts patients on unstable legal ground in states that have
passed medical-pot plebiscites -- under state law, they can be
prescribed marijuana and use it, but federal law prohibits them from
growing it or obtaining it.

In theory, the U.S. Congress could pass a law to exempt the medicinal
sale of pot, but the current Republican administration has taken a
strong zero-tolerance approach to even mild recreational drugs.

Still, yesterday's ruling did not directly address the issue of state
initiatives. And many patients said they are willing to face arrest
in order to continue using marijuana.

"I'm not going to comply, personally, with the law," said Mary Lucey,
a Los Angeles woman who said she needs "a couple puffs" to hold down
the 12-pill AIDS drug regime she has been taking for 15 years. "I'm
more concerned about the risk of death than I am about the risk of
arrest."

Most of the larger clubs also said they'll stay open.

"Until our members decide otherwise, we're going to continue to
cultivate and harvest and make available marijuana to legitimate
medical users," said Scott Imler, founder and president of the Los
Angeles centre.

"It's up to the [U.S.] Attorney-General and the Drug Enforcement
Agency to pursue whether they want to go after AIDS patients and
little old ladies with glaucoma."

Doctors have increasingly recognized cannabis as a useful drug for
patients suffering from acute pain, nausea or appetite loss.

AIDS patients have found it effective in countering the nausea
brought on by their drug cocktails, and cancer patients often find it
a less addictive alternative to opiates in easing the effects of
chemotherapy.

In Canada, the federal government recently began implementing rules
that allow the licensed growing of marijuana on behalf of patients
who have prescriptions. The rules would make Canada one of the first
countries to have government-licensed pot farms. (In its current
issue, the Canadian Medical Association Journal calls for the
government to go even further and decriminalize marijuana for
personal use.)

When Ottawa's new rules were announced last month, Health Minister
Allan Rock said Canada is "acting compassionately by allowing people
who are suffering from grave and debilitating illnesses to have
access to marijuana for medical purposes."

The regulations were prompted by a decision by the Ontario Court of
Appeal, which ruled that federal laws forbidding marijuana possession
are unconstitutional.

"It's as if we're moving in a completely opposite direction from the
Americans," said Philippe Lucas, a Victoria schoolteacher who runs
the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, a pot pharmacy similar to
the ones in California and other states.

However, Canadian pot distributors do complain about the flip side of
regulated marijuana.

Mr. Lucas said Canada's new regulations will make it harder for
patients to obtain marijuana, since all except chronic patients --
those likely to die within a year -- will require the approval of a
doctor and at least one third-party expert before obtaining a permit,
a process that could take months.

"It's hypocritical. My own doctor can get me medical cocaine or
morphine or even heroin with a simple prescription, but if I need
marijuana I need three specialists and a year of bureaucracy," said
Mr. Lucas, who currently faces provincial drug charges stemming from
a bust last November.