MEDICAL POT BACKERS APPEAL TO COURT

Congress Can't Bar Use Of Local Weed, They Say

Medical marijuana advocates took their best shot Tuesday at winning an
exception from federal drug laws, arguing to a federal appeals court that
the government has no power to deny home-grown pot to two women who use it
to ease severe pain.

Banning patients from using locally produced marijuana, with their doctors'
approval, goes beyond Congress' constitutional authority to regulate
interstate commerce, the women's lawyer told the court, which seemed
sympathetic.

"There was no commercial activity," Judge Harry Pregerson said during the
40-minute hearing of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco. "They're not selling this. They're just using it for their own
benefit."

Another member of the three-judge panel, Richard Paez, compared the case
with a decision by the court in March that a woman who took a nude photo of
herself and her daughter was not subject to federal prosecution for child
pornography because the photo was not used in interstate commerce.

But Justice Department lawyer Mark Quinlivan said the Ninth Circuit and
other federal courts have upheld federal prosecution for illicit drugs no
matter where they originate. "Congress has made express findings that both
inter- and intrastate drug trafficking affect interstate commerce," he told
the court.

The case is one of many arising from a conflict between California's
Proposition 215 of 1996, which legalized medical use of marijuana with a
doctor's approval, and the federal law that bans marijuana with no
exception for medical use. Rebuffed in rulings that have upheld federal
action against medical marijuana clubs, advocates are pinning their hopes
on Tuesday's case, which seeks a narrower exemption for individual patients.

According to the October 2002 lawsuit, which seeks an injunction against
federal prosecution, plaintiff Angel Raich of Oakland suffers from painful
and life-threatening conditions, including a brain tumor, wasting syndrome
and a seizure disorder, and uses marijuana to relieve pain and ease the
side effects of other therapies.

The second plaintiff, Diane Monson of Oroville (Butte County), uses
marijuana to ease chronic back pain and muscle spasms, and was the target
of an August 2002 raid in which federal agents seized and destroyed her six
plants.

The case involves "the growing and using of medical cannabis to alleviate
suffering and preserve someone's life," their lawyer, Randy Barnett, told
the court.

A federal judge ruled against the women in March, saying the appeals court
had upheld congressional power to ban locally grown marijuana in the 1990
case of a defendant whose pot plants were found rooted in the ground.