PUTTING A LID ON THE POT ISSUE

By refusing to take up the Bush administration's appeal of a ruling
protecting doctors who recommend medical marijuana to their patients,
the U.S. Supreme Court has taken away one of the tools Attorney
General John Ashcroft has used to try and assert federal authority
over an issue that should be left to the states.

Ashcroft has made it a personal crusade to place legal roadblocks in
the path of states that have chosen to legalize medical marijuana. He
has aggressively dispatched federal agents to raid farms where
marijuana designated as medicine is grown; and he has continued a
wrongheaded Clinton-era policy of warning doctors that they risk
losing prescription-writing privileges by discussing the medical
applications of marijuana with patients.

The action by the Supreme Court on Tuesday means Ashcroft's threats to
doctors are now mostly empty. The court allowed to stand a 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that bars the Justice Department from
punishing doctors for giving such advice.

Many experts believe that marijuana provides substantial relief to
those suffering from symptoms related to a variety of afflictions
including glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and cancer. People with chronic diseases
are not necessarily using marijuana as a way to get high but as
therapy. It has been said to revive the appetite of an AIDS patient
suffering from the wasting syndrome and to relieve the nausea
accompanying chemotherapy treatments, among other therapeutic uses.

There are seven states within the nine-state jurisdiction of the 9th
Circuit that have legalized medical marijuana. The direct consequence
of the ruling is that the doctors from those states may now freely
recommend the drug to their patients. As to the three additional
states that allow the use of medical marijuana - Maine, Colorado and
Maryland - but do not fall within the 9th Circuit, their doctors too
should take some comfort in the ruling and the Supreme Court's action.
It is hard to fathom that after this rebuff by the courts, the Justice
Department would continue to pursue doctors outside the 9th Circuit,
although we wouldn't put it past this attorney general.

Ashcroft continues to try to subvert the voters' will in California
and elsewhere where medical marijuana was legalized through an
initiative process. His interest in state's rights, so evident when he
was a public official in Missouri, seems to have dissipated since he
ascended to the top federal law enforcement job.