CALIFORNIA'S POT LAW UPHELD IN APPEALS COURT

A state appeals court upheld California's 12-year-old medical
marijuana law Thursday, rejecting two counties' arguments that
allowing patients to use the drug with their doctor's approval
condones violations of federal narcotics laws.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego dismissed challenges
by San Diego and San Bernardino counties, which objected both to the
1996 marijuana initiative and to recent legislation requiring
counties to issue identification cards to users of medical pot.

The cards protect their holders from arrest by state or local police
for possessing small amounts of marijuana.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government can
enforce its drug laws, which ban marijuana use and cultivation,
against patients and their suppliers in California and the 11 other
states that have legalized medical marijuana under their own laws.

But in Thursday's ruling, the appeals court said states remain free
to decide whether to punish drug users under their own laws.

"The (federal) law does not compel the states to impose criminal
penalties for marijuana possession," said Justice Alex McDonald in
the 3-0 ruling, which upheld a Superior Court judge's decision.

"The purpose of the (federal law) is to combat recreational drug use,
not to regulate a state's medical practices."

Besides, McDonald said, the counties' only obligation under the
California law is to process and hand out the ID cards, a requirement
that poses no conflict with federal law.

State and local officers can't arrest marijuana users for violating
the federal law, he said, and applications for the medical marijuana
cards contain a warning that they provide no shield against federal
authorities.

Although the state's decision to allow medical marijuana use
"arguably undermines the goals" of the federal law, McDonald said,
county governments are unaffected by any such conflicts and therefore
have no right to sue to overturn the entire state law.

San Diego County's lawyer, Senior Deputy County Counsel Thomas
Bunton, said county supervisors may decide by next week whether to
appeal to the state Supreme Court. He said a future appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court is also possible.

"We think the court should have found that California's medical
marijuana laws are pre-empted by the federal law," Bunton said. "We
think (the ID card law) requires us to issue cards in support of
conduct that violates federal law."

Advocacy groups that joined the state in defense of its law said the
ruling shows that states are free to chart their own course on
medical marijuana.

The decision "provides yet further confirmation that states need not
march in lockstep with federal policy," said Adam Wolf, an American
Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing the National Association
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

He said the court issued "a stinging rebuke to the misguided attempt
of a few rogue counties to undermine the will of California's voters
and the well-being of thousands of sick and dying patients."

In a separate case Thursday, the Third District Court of Appeal in
Sacramento became the second to declare unconstitutional a 2003 state
law that limited the amount of marijuana a patient could possess for
medical use and remain exempt from prosecution.

The ruling would leave those decisions up to local governments, or to
local prosecutors and juries in counties that lacked an official
standard. The law, part of the same legislation that established the
state-approved identification cards, allowed patients to possess up
to 8 ounces of dried marijuana, or up to six mature marijuana plants
or 12 immature plants, unless a doctor had recommended greater
amounts to meet the patient's needs.

The Third District Court ruled that the law conflicted with the 1996
medical marijuana initiative, Proposition 215, which set no numerical
limits on the amount of marijuana a patient could possess.

An appeals court in Los Angeles reached the same conclusion in May, a
ruling that Attorney General Jerry Brown's office has appealed to the
state Supreme Court.