JUSTICES BAR MEDICAL DEFENSE FOR DISTRIBUTION OF MARIJUANA

WASHINGTON, May 14 — The Supreme Court ruled today that federal law does
not allow a "medical necessity" exception to the prohibition on the
distribution of marijuana. The 8- to-0 decision dealt a setback, but not a
definitive blow, to a movement that has passed medical marijuana ballot
initiatives in eight states.

The ruling did not overturn the state initiatives or address any question
of state law. Rather, the court ruled that marijuana's listing by Congress
as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act meant that it "has
no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States."

The court said in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas that the federal
appeals court in San Francisco misread federal law when it ruled last year
that an Oakland marijuana cooperative could raise a medical-necessity
defense against the federal government's effort to shut down the
pharmacylike cooperative.

The cooperative distributes marijuana to patients whose doctors say they
need it to ease the symptoms of cancer, AIDS and other illnesses.

The Justice Department brought the case as a request for an injunction
rather than as a criminal prosecution, which would have required a jury
trial. Since nearly three-quarters of Oakland's voters supported
California's Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that enacted the
Compassionate Use Act to permit the medical use of marijuana, the
government would have faced — and, indeed, still faces — a daunting
challenge in finding a jury willing to convict someone for making marijuana
available for that purpose.

The Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative was set up with the blessing of
the city government and the police department.

The question before the Supreme Court today was a relatively narrow one:
not the validity of the California initiative itself but of the federal
courts' response to the government's request for an injunction. The United
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the trial judge,
Charles Breyer of Federal District Court, to tailor an injunction that
would permit those with a serious medical condition that could be
alleviated only by marijuana to have continued access to the drug.

The Clinton administration, asserting that the Ninth Circuit had committed
a serious error that threatened to undermine federal drug laws, persuaded
the Supreme Court to grant a stay of Judge Breyer's ruling last August.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer did not participate in any phase of the case
because Judge Breyer, who sits in San Francisco, is his younger brother.

Given the narrowness of the question before the court, the decision today
left a number of questions unanswered. Among these were the availability of
a medical necessity defense to individual patients who grow or possess
marijuana for their own use, as opposed to a mass distributor like the
Oakland cooperative, as well as whether state governments could carry out
their medical marijuana initiatives by going directly into the distribution
business. Two states, Nevada and Maine, are considering such a system.

Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, in addition to
California, Nevada and Maine, have also passed medical marijuana
initiatives in the last few years. Advocates for medical marijuana said
today that this campaign would continue, with many noting that nearly all
marijuana prosecutions are handled at the state rather than federal level.

Last month, a jury in state court in Sonoma County, Calif., acquitted a man
who offered a medical-necessity defense to a charge of cultivating 850
marijuana plants.

Advocates of the medical use of marijuana say the drug is effective in
combatting the nausea of chemotherapy and the wasting syndrome of AIDS. The
California Medical Association, which supports the therapeutic use of
marijuana under a doctor's direction, said today it was "very disappointed"
in the ruling because of the organization's "core belief that patients
should not suffer unnecessarily when other options fail."

There is a debate over whether a legal drug called Marinol, a synthetic
version of the active ingredient in marijuana, offers the relief that some
patients find in marijuana.

Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, an advocacy group
here, predicted that the decision would "heighten the conflict in both
legal and political terms" and could make it difficult for prosecutors to
win a conviction in any marijuana case. Mr. Zeese said the distribution
clubs were working on such new strategies as maintaining a "grow room"
where patients would own their own marijuana plants, thus avoiding the
potential legal pitfall of distribution.

Justice Thomas's opinion, United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers'
Cooperative, No. 00-151, contained some broad language suggesting that its
analysis meant there could be no acceptable medical use of marijuana in any
setting, not only in the context of distribution by large organizations.
For that reason, Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg refused to sign his opinion, writing in a separate concurring
opinion that large-scale distribution was the only issue the case presented
and on which the court would validly rule.

"Most notably, whether the defense might be available to a seriously ill
patient for whom there is no alternative means of avoiding starvation or
extraordinary suffering is a difficult issue that is not presented here,"
Justice Stevens wrote in an opinion that the other two justices joined.

California filed a brief in support of the Oakland cooperative, asserting
that the federal law "unduly intrudes into California's traditional right
to regulate for the health and welfare of their citizens."

Justice Stevens said Justice Thomas's opinion showed inadequate "respect
for the sovereign states that comprise our federal union." This provoked a
response from Justice Thomas, who said: "Because federal courts interpret,
rather than author, the federal criminal code, we are not at liberty to
rewrite it."

When he was governor of Texas, President Bush said that he was personally
opposed to legalizing marijuana for medical use but that states should have
the right to decide for themselves. "I believe each state can choose that
decision as they so choose," he said in October 1999, according to an
article in The Dallas Morning News that Justice Stevens cited in his
opinion today.