JUSTICE DEPT.'S REEFER MADNESS

ADMINISTRATION FIGHTING WRONG WAR ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

It wouldn't have been surprising if the Supreme Court justices had
passed around a bong to unwind after contorting themselves in legal
knots over the federal government's right to punish medical marijuana
users. It would take as much to reconcile their reasoning with their
usual philosophies. It will take an act of Congress to restore some
balance in a war on drugs now taking completely innocent prisoners.

The court's conservative bloc that spent the last 15 years codifying
the harshest aspects of the war on drugs found itself, in the name of
states' rights, defending medical marijuana so long as states
approved. The liberal bloc that has attempted (and usually failed) to
soften drug-policing's claws found itself endorsing punishment for the
least threatening class of marijuana users -- debilitated cancer and
AIDS patients and the like, for whom a joint is a break from pain. The
liberal bloc did not want to nullify Congress' regulatory reach.

The only oddity was Antonin Scalia, usually the most conservative of
the bunch.

He sided with the liberals.

Where does that leave the nation's estimated 100,000 medical marijuana
users in 11 states that have helped pass laws and referendums allowing
them either to grow or to smoke the plant if they have a valid medical
reason? They have various avenues of relief.

One of them is implicit in the fact that, according to the American
Civil Liberties Union, the federal government accounts for only 1
percent of all marijuana prosecutions in the country.

Odds are that medical marijuana users are safe carrying on as they
have, so long as their approving state doesn't turn tail.

That's no comfort to the likes of Angel McClary Raich and Diane
Monson, the two patients who were busted by federal agents in 2002 for
marijuana possession. Their hopes lie where the liberal majority of
the court's reasoning leads.

It's up to Congress to relax marijuana laws. Next week the House of
Representatives is due to vote on the matter.

It's not an up-or-down vote on the merits of medical marijuana, but an
appropriation bill for the Justice Department. An amendment to that
bill calls for forbidding the Justice Department from prosecuting
medical marijuana cases.

The amendment makes perfect sense on two grounds. First, the Justice
Department with its limited resources has better things to do than
chase after harmless marijuana users in 11 states.

It would be nice, for example, if a few FBI agents were taken off the
marijuana beat and put on the anti-terrorism beat, which has not been
the agency's shiniest branch in the last few years.

Second, by preventing federal prosecution of medical marijuana users,
the laws in the 11 states that allow such use of the drug would remain
in force, un-threatened, and this week's Supreme Court decision would
be nothing more than a legal argument whose bearing will become
evident (for good or bad) in subsequent cases.

The House took up that amendment last year. It failed, but 19
Republicans voted for it. Its chances of passing this year are again
iffy. It's an election year. Few politicians want to be seen as soft
on drug users, whatever the reasons.

But it's also a matter of compassion and common sense.

Medical marijuana is not a threat to society, unless one buys into the
argument that it provides an opening through which healthy individuals
will abuse the medical exception just to smoke reefers.

A few surely will. So what? About 100,000 people will also benefit
themselves -- and society -- by remaining functional, their pain
significantly reduced.

They're not drug addicts. They're individuals, many of them terminally
ill, whose chances at a less painful life happen to be improved by
marijuana.

The only potheads in the picture are those who'd deny such simple and
medically proven pain relief (and compassion) in the name of a tired,
unwinnable war on drugs.