COURT'S MEDICAL POT RULING SHIELDS DOCTORS

SAN FRANCISCO -- Removing a major obstacle to implementation of state
medical marijuana laws, a federal appeals court Tuesday prohibited the
federal government from cracking down on physicians who recommend pot to
their patients.

The decision provides a missing link between patients and pot-access laws
in states such as California, where marijuana is legal medicine only if
recommended by a doctor.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resoundingly rejected a national
policy adopted five years ago by the Clinton administration and retained
under President Bush.

Announced with fanfare, the policy put doctors on notice that their federal
licenses to prescribe drugs could be revoked, they could be booted from
Medicare and other federal health-care programs, and they could be
prosecuted in the federal courts.

A group of doctors and their patients sued, saying their private
discussions about treatment options had been chilled by the warnings. Many
doctors had refused to talk about marijuana with their patients entirely.

They won a series of injunctions, which the 9th Circuit has now upheld in
the first opinion of its kind. Federal authorities can't even investigate
doctors who merely recommend marijuana "because a doctor's recommendation
does not itself constitute illegal conduct," the court said.

While doctors still can be punished if they "aid and abet the actual
distribution and possession of marijuana," said the court in an opinion by
its chief judge, Mary Schroeder of Phoenix, they can't be held responsible
if patients acquire marijuana after leaving the office -- even if the
doctors anticipate that will happen.

The court's opinion does not alter the status of marijuana as a drug that
is illegal under federal law. As a practical matter, however, state laws
govern virtually all criminal enforcement as well as virtually all
regulation of the medical profession.

The 9th Circuit told federal authorities to let the states do their thing.

Dr. Jack Lewin, chief executive officer of the California Medical
Association, said the CMA will advise doctors "they are now free to discuss
openly with their patients ... the issue of marijuana or any other
substance that they believe will be helpful."

Although they won't be able to write pot prescriptions until federal law is
changed, Lewin said, the decision allows them to "put in writing their
discussions with the patients."

Keith Vines, a San Francisco assistant district attorney, predicted the
circuit opinion would "open the door."

An AIDS patient whose doctor recommended the marijuana that he credits with
saving his life, Vines said that for him, the decision meant "that I can
pick up the phone and the doctor will still be practicing medicine."

"What was so insidious about this government policy," said Ann Brick of the
American Civil Liberties Union, which led the legal challenge, "is that it
turned the war on drugs into a war on patients. We don't want sick people
going to the Internet for medical advice because their doctors are afraid
to give it."

On the losing side of the case, the U.S. Justice Department said it was
reviewing the opinion.

The 9th Circuit is the top federal court for California and most of the
eight other states where marijuana is legal medicine.

Only the U.S. Supreme Court can overturn its rulings. The high court did so
in 2001, after the 9th Circuit ruled that patients accused of violating
federal drug laws could claim medical necessity as a defense.

Since then, federal authorities have conducted a series of raids against
medical marijuana operations throughout California.

Valerie Corral, an epilepsy patient and founder of a Santa Cruz medical pot
collective that recently was raided by federal agents, said the new
decision "re-establishes marijuana in the framework of medicine, and I
don't think anything can be more important than that to patients."