Drug or Medicine?

ALABAMA BRIEF DEFENDS CALIFORNIA MARIJUANA LAW

What do medical marijuana laws, racial segregation and Roy Moore's Ten
Commandments monument have in common?

The states' rights argument has been used to defend each of them.
Alabama is defending California's controversial medical marijuana law,
which was passed in a voter initiative in 1996. It allows sick people
to use marijuana to relieve symptoms under certain
circumstances.

In October, Alabama Attorney General Troy King joined Louisiana and
Mississippi in submitting a friend of the court brief in Ashcroft v.
Raich, the California medical marijuana case currently pending before
the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case involves Angel Raich, an Oakland, Calif., woman who said she
uses marijuana to manage symptoms from an inoperable brain tumor and
other illnesses. She and another woman filed the lawsuit after the
federal government moved to restrict their marijuana use.

California and nine other states allow the use of marijuana for
medical purposes. The writers of the Alabama brief said it doesn't
matter whether California's law is a good idea or not.

"The point is that, as a sovereign member of the federal union,
California is entitled to make for itself the tough policy choices
that affect its citizens," King and the others wrote.

The writers took pains to emphasize that they do not endorse
California's law. And those expecting a loosening of marijuana laws in
Alabama were likely to be disappointed.

"Alabama's Attorney General has every intention of continuing to
prosecute drug crimes to the fullest extent of the law," the brief
states.

The brief also mentions that Alabama treats the possession of
marijuana as a Class A misdemeanor that can result in a year in prison
for the first offense. Selling or transporting marijuana is punishable
by up to 20 years in prison.

The brief includes statistics on drug arrests in Alabama, mentioning
the 9,469 arrests for marijuana possession in 2003, which represent 57
percent of all drug arrests.

One of those arrested under Alabama's marijuana law was Loretta Nall
of Alexander City. She's appealing a conviction earlier this year on
charges of possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia related to a
bust at her Alexander City home. She praised the attorney general's
office for writing the brief, calling it "wonderful."

Nall is now chairwoman of the Alabama Marijuana Party and the U.S.
Marijuana Party. The group, which is pushing for the legalization of
marijuana, hopes to convince state lawmakers to introduce medical
marijuana legislation in the Legislature next year, she said.

"And so it bodes well for us, if we're able to get something through
the Alabama state Legislature, that the Alabama attorney general has
come out and said already that he supports states' rights, even though
he's antidrug and antimedical marijuana on premise," she said.

Others were less enthusiastic.

"We wouldn't support the legalization of marijuana under any
circumstances," said John Giles, president of the Christian Coalition
of Alabama. "It just opens the door to mischief."

Legal marijuana activity would likely spawn more illegal marijuana
activity, he said.

Giles said he wasn't knowledgeable enough about the issues to comment
on the brief Alabama filed in the California case.

King's stance might seem odd, but it's consistent with positions the
state has taken in the past, said Randolph Horn, a political science
professor at Samford University.

He said many people in Alabama believe states should decide about
major social issues. "It's an important part of the conservative
ideology," he said.

Alabama has tended to assert that it can decide issues independently
from the federal government, he said. Examples include the state's
secession from the Union in 1861 and the state's refusal to follow
desegregation orders in the 1960s, Horn said.

Even the battle over the Ten Commandments monument then-Alabama
Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore placed in the rotunda of the state
Supreme Court building in 2001 was argued in states' rights terms by
some.

King backed Moore in his effort against the federal courts, which
found that the monument's placement was an unconstitutional state
endorsement of religion. While he was legal adviser to Gov. Bob Riley,
King wrote a friend of the court brief on Moore's behalf. Moore was
removed from office last year for ignoring a federal court order to
remove the monument.

[sidebar]

MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Here is a summary of the argument prepared by Alabama
Attorney General Troy King regarding a medical marijuana case before the
U.S. Supreme Court:

"The question presented here is not whether vigorous enforcement of the
Nation's drug laws is good criminal policy. It most assuredly is. The
question, rather, is whether the Constitution permits the Federal
Government,under the guise of regulating interstate commerce, to
criminalize the purely local possession of marijuana for personal
medicinal use. It does not."

Source - Alabama attorney general's office