LET STATES DECIDE MEDICINAL POT USE

Many doctors recognize marijuana's medicinal role in helping seriously
ill people cope with pain. So do 11 states, including Colorado, where
voters have approved the medical use of the drug. But the federal
government asserts in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that even
the medical use of marijuana is illegal and that the federal view
should supercede the states. We disagree. States should be allowed to
continue to decide the matter for themselves.

The court heard arguments on the issue last Monday. Attorneys
representing patients in California argued that Congress has no
authority to ban the drug's medicinal use because it is not part of
the stream of illegal drug traffic that crosses state borders. It is
grown and used, under a doctor's order, within a state that has made
such drug use legal.

The Justice Department argued that state laws allowing medicinal use
of marijuana violate the 1970 federal Controlled Substances Act, which
prohibits use of marijuana even for medicinal purposes. The government
also used the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution to argue that
homegrown pot could affect interstate commerce, if it drives down the
street price of the drug and gets into the hands of people who are not
sick. Allowing states to decide the medicinal issue erodes
congressional powers over interstate commerce, the argument went.

The Justice Department seemed to go out of its way to challenge state
laws that allow sick or dying people to use homegrown marijuana, and
to claim that such laws encourage drug abuse. It seems the height of
absurdity. If Chief Justice Rehnquist used marijuana to ease the
discomfort of his recently diagnosed cancer, as one lawyer suggested,
how does that encourage drug use or impact interstate commerce? It
doesn't.

The arguments before the Supreme Court arose from a California case
that will determine whether federal agents can go after sick people,
many dying, who grow marijuana prescribed by their doctors and
approved by their states.

Two California women who use marijuana - one with an inoperable brain
tumor, the other with a degenerative disease of the spine - sued the
government after federal agents confiscated their plants. The 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the women. The Justice Department
appealed.

Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved the medical use of marijuana
in 2000. It seems to us that as long as it is grown, prescribed and
used in the state, then its use should be allowed under those strict
regulations. The court also should consider that penalties for illegal
use of small amounts of marijuana has been reduced in many states,
including Colorado.

It seems governmental resources can be put to much better use than
depriving sick and dying people of temporary relief.