MEDICINAL-MARIJUANA CASE GOES TO NATION'S HIGH COURT THIS WEEK

OAKLAND, Calif. - For the nation's budding medicinal-marijuana movement,
ground zero is now a small storefront operation in downtown Oakland that
has managed to thumb its nose at the powers of the federal government for
years.

Inside, T-shirts hawking hemp are for sale, as are pipes and other
paraphernalia used for smoking pot. Most visitors head to the back of the
store, hoping to register for the right to possess marijuana for the sole
purpose of easing the pain of a serious or even terminal medical
affliction. It is a modest refuge for a movement under siege.

The Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative has weathered one legal storm after
another since California became the first state to legalize medicinal pot
with the passage of Proposition 215 more than four years ago. But this
week, the club confronts by far its most significant threat, one that has
placed it at the center of a national crusade to uphold medicinal-marijuana
laws in the face of federal drug restrictions.

In a case that arises out of an attempt to shutter the Oakland club and
other similar Northern California operations, the U.S. Supreme Court on
Wednesday will take its first look at the seemingly irreconcilable conflict
between a state's desire to legalize marijuana for medical use and federal
laws that forbid the possession of pot.

"It's our movement if we lose," says Jeff Jones, the Oakland club leader
who became a champion for medicinal marijuana after watching his father die
of kidney cancer. "I'm not in this to lose. I'm not in this to give up."

Whatever the Supreme Court rules, it will help clear up a host of legal
confusion that has surrounded Proposition 215 since its inception. In fact,
the U.S. Supreme Court's decision could greatly influence the California
Supreme Court, which earlier this month for the first time agreed to
consider whether Proposition 215 provides immunity from criminal
prosecution for medicinal marijuana users.

"A year from now, we'll know a lot more about medical marijuana in our
state," said David De Alba, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's
policy adviser on Proposition 215.

California is not the only state hoping for clarity. In Maine, officials
are holding off on the mechanics of enforcing their new medicinal-marijuana
laws until the Supreme Court rules. Other states, such as Oregon, which
developed the first statewide government registry of eligible
medicinal-marijuana patients, are nervously monitoring how the Supreme
Court addresses what has become a sticky legal and public policy issue.

The justices have stepped into a three-year legal standoff between the U.S.
Justice Department and backers of California's Proposition 215, approved by
voters in 1996. The high court is not deciding the legality of Proposition
215 - rather, it is specifically reviewing an earlier federal appeals-court
ruling that carved out a "medical necessity" exception to federal drug laws
that make it a crime to possess or distribute marijuana.

The Supreme Court must decide whether to affirm or reverse a 1999 ruling by
the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that held that "medical necessity"
could trump federal drug laws and allow distribution of pot to patients
facing "imminent harm."

In court papers, the government has called the 9th Circuit's ruling
"unprecedented" and a threat to Congress' power to combat illegal drug
trafficking. In a brief filed with the justices in January, the U.S.
solicitor general argued that the ruling would allow clubs like Oakland's
to "function as an unregulated and unsupervised marijuana pharmacy."

Legal experts say creating a medical-necessity right - even for sick
patients in severe pain - is a long shot in the Supreme Court.

"This court has been very reluctant to find those kinds of rights," said
Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of Southern California law professor who
supports Proposition 215. "And if they find California's law is pre-empted
(by federal drug law), it's hard to see what those other states would be
doing that's not pre-empted."

Proposition 215 permits marijuana for the sick and dying, including those
with life-threatening illnesses such as AIDS and cancer. But the law never
made it clear how patients would obtain a drug that is illegal, and the
result has been one skirmish after another in the courts between
law-enforcement officials and doctors, patients and medicinal-marijuana
advocates.

Gerald Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor who will argue the
Oakland club's case in the Supreme Court, said he will try to persuade the
court to carve out a narrow exception that would benefit a specific - and
small - group of people.

Medicinal-marijuana patients are pinning their hopes on Uelmen's arguments.

"If the Supreme Court rules against us, they give us a death sentence,"
said Angel McClary, one of the Oakland club's medical-necessity patients.
"They need to understand we are sick, disabled and dying."