MEDICINAL-POT USERS STUCK

Time For Legislature To Act

It has been 12 years since Californians passed Proposition 215, the
law allowing medicinal-marijuana use in California. The Star
supported the proposition allowing people who possess or cultivate
marijuana for medical treatment recommended by a physician to be
exempt from prosecution for it. In light of the proposition, it makes
no sense for the California Supreme Court to rule, as it did
Thursday, on a 5-2 vote, that employers can fire workers who used
marijuana recommended by a physician.

The decision stems from the case of Gary Ross who had a medical
marijuana card, authorizing him to legally use marijuana for chronic
pain from a back injury he sustained while in the Air Force. He was
fired from his job after flunking a company-ordered drug test.

The Sacramento telecommunications company, RagingWire Inc., argued it
could fire Mr. Ross because marijuana use -- even if recommended by a
physician -- is illegal under federal law. Mr. Ross argued that
employees who use legally recommended marijuana are due the same
protections as those prescribed conventional painkillers.

His case exemplifies the Catch-22 Californians who use medically
recommended marijuana continue to face. And it's not just
Californians, as at least 11 other states have medicinal-marijuana laws.

This state-federal schizophrenia unfairly penalizes people who have
sought medical treatment for serious ailments and whose doctors have
recommended they use marijuana.

Since Proposition 215 was passed in 1996, The Star has supported
legislation to end this Catch-22. Even the U.S. Supreme Court, when
it voted 6-3 in 2005 that state medical marijuana laws do not protect
people from federal prosecution stated in the majority opinion that
the issue belongs before Congress. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote
that the court's decision was based on the technical interstate
commerce aspect of the case and did not consider the medical-necessity defense.

We hope this latest case is the impetus for the state Legislature to
pass a law to protect employees who use medical marijuana to be
treated the same as any employee who is prescribed painkillers. And
we hope it spurs Congress to settle this issue once and for all at
the federal level.

The classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug -- meaning it
has no medicinal value and cannot be prescribed -- stems from
President Nixon's declaration of a national war on drugs 38 years ago.

Since then, studies, including one from the Institute of Medicine at
the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, have demonstrated
marijuana can ease wasting in people with AIDS (which had not even
been named in 1970) and has practical applications for patients
undergoing chemotherapy or who have advanced cancer or muscle spasms
associated with multiple sclerosis.

In 2008, marijuana should be classified a Schedule II drug, which
doctors are allowed to prescribe.

In the meantime, employers should not discriminate against
legitimately ill people who abide by state medicinal-marijuana laws.