CALIFORNIA WINS ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW

Fourth District Court of Appeal upholds validity of state law over
federal supremacy

On July 31 California's Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed that
California's medical marijuana laws are valid despite the fact that
federal law does not make any provision for the medicinal use of
marijuana. This means that state, county and local officials, whether
they like the laws put in place by the people through the initiative
process and later the Legislature, are duty-bound the implement those laws.

For years various officials who don't approve of the laws that give
bona fide patients the right to use, possess and grow marijuana have
argued that because federal law places marijuana on Schedule I (which
prohibits any use, including medical) under the 1974 Controlled
Substances Act (CSA), that the California law is invalid. The
doctrine of "federal supremacy," they have argued, doesn't allow
states to have less restrictive laws.

That argument was always disingenuous or worse. Our federal
Constitution created a system in which the states have wide latitude
to take different legal approaches to various issues, explicitly to
allow the states to be "laboratories of democracy" and try different
approaches, with other states free to study the results and emulate
them or not. Only on rare occasions does Congress declare that the
feds have "occupied the field" in a way that precludes the states
from trying different approaches.

After going back to the original language of the CSA, the Fourth
District court concluded that the law not only did not declare that
it was supreme over the states, but that it "signifies Congress's
intent to maintain the power of states to elect to serve as a
laboratory in the trial of social and economic experiments without
risk to the rest of the country ..."

This was so obvious that the court rejected out of hand the claim
that Prop. 215, passed by the voters in 1996, was invalid due to
conflict with federal law. It then turned to SB 420, which among
other things set up a voluntary patient identification card system
and requires counties to do the initial screening of patients who
want such a card so the state health department can issue them. San
Diego County, joined by San Bernardino County, had filed suit to have
that law invalidated, not only because it conflicted with federal law
but because the legislature had changed the original law, and only
voters can change a law originally passed by the voters.

The court ruled that SB 420 was designed (as its sponsors said at the
time) not to change Prop. 215, but to implement and clarify it.
Therefore the ID card system, since it is voluntary and doesn't take
any rights from patients who prefer not to get an ID card, is valid
and counties (which under California law are subdivisions of the
state) are obligated to follow it.

It would be a waste of time and taxpayers' money for San Diego to
appeal this decision to the California Supreme Court, which recently
declined to hear an appeal from another case that raised
state-federal issues. San Diego County and all the officials who have
been blatantly or subtly dragging their feet are on notice that their
legal obligation is to follow state law, not federal law, when it
comes to medical marijuana. It's time for the foot-dragging to end.