WILL CANADA'S MARIJUANA LAWS SET AN EXAMPLE FOR THE U.S.?

LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: We are paying attention to Canada's new medical
marijuana law, the first of its kind in the world. While at the same time,
states' laws governing the use of medical marijuana are under fire here by
the United States Supreme Court.

Joining us here in Atlanta is Sue Roche. She is the executive director of
the National Families in Action, with me here in Atlanta. And in Washington
we have Chuck Thomas from the Marijuana Policy Project. What we just saw
from CTV in Canada was a statement from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
(UNINTELLIGIBLE) said all that's changed is, in the marijuana laws, is that
if you don't have a permit to grow or use this marijuana, you get busted.

Is there any practical effect, or anything realized in the debate here in
the United States because of this new law in Canada?

SUE ROCHE, NATIONAL FAMILIES IN ACTION: I don't think so. The issue really
is the science and medical issue. Marijuana has not been approved as safe
or effective by the Food and Drug Administration, and every medicine that
your doctor prescribes for you or me or everybody out there has been.
Although Canada has taken this step, the Canadian Medical Association
bitterly opposes it, because they're now put in a position of prescribing
- -- they're going to be pressured by patients to prescribe a drug that
hasn't met these tests, and may do more harm than good. That's what we
worry about.

WATERS: How is this different from the United States, though? Out in
California it's a doctor's prescription that allows you...

ROCHE: It's actually not a prescription. The doctor can recommend, but may
not legally prescribe a drug that FDA has not approved.

WATERS: OK, Chuck? What do you think about the Canada law? Does it have any
bearing at all on what we're arguing about here in the United States?

CHUCK THOMAS, MARIJUANA POLICY PROJECT: I think it definitely does because
here in the United States what we're arguing is that if a doctor believes
that a patient would benefit from the use of medical marijuana, that
patient shouldn't be arrested and sent to prison simply for taking their
doctor's advice. Unfortunately, right now in the United States, medical
marijuana users are treated exactly the same way as nonmedical users. There
is absolutely no exception made for people who are doing it because their
doctors told them to, to treat a serious illness.

Now, in Canada they've had enough compassion to recognize that there has to
be a way to allow law enforcement and the criminal justice people to make a
distinction between people who are using it for fun versus people who are
using it because they have a serious medical need. And that's what this is
really all about, is making that distinction so that sick people aren't
punished the same way that healthy people are.

Now, in the United States, every time we try to advocate for changing the
national laws to allow these distinctions, as eight states already do,
there's this sense that, well, how could this possibly be done? How could
we possibly distinguish between a sick person and healthy person? Well, now
we can point to Canada as having a system where they have all kinds of
rigid guidelines spelled out. You need your doctor's approval, you need to
verify that you've tried other available medications.

WATERS: All right, let's give Sue a chance to answer these things that
you've been saying here.

ROCHE: I agree with Chuck to this extent: I think people should listen to
their doctors. And if you look at to three medical associations, the
American Medical Association, the Canadian Medical Association and the
British Medical Journal, which speaks for British doctors, they all oppose
this move for the very reason that I said before: this drug has not been
shown to be safe or effective for any medical use, and may be doing more
harm than good to AIDS patients and others.

WATERS: Is it strictly about the safety of marijuana? We're talking about
AIDS patients, people who are dying, terminally ill, whose pain might be
relieved. The word "compassion," as Chuck used is used often in this argument.

ROCHE: That's correct, but there are much better medications for the
treatment of every disease that its advocates claim marijuana takes care of.

THOMAS: But, Sue, you know that that's not for all people.

ROCHE: What we want to be sure of is that anybody who is ill and whose
immune system is already compromised is not given a drug that may further
compromise their immune system and make it more difficult for them to recover.

THOMAS: I hate to interrupt, but I wanted to take a turn to point out that
in the United States, the AIDS Action Council, the National Association of
People with AIDS, the California Medical Association -- I could rattle off
dozens of names of medical groups that do support legal access to medical
marijuana.

ROCHE: That's absolutely true. You could, but they are small groups that
have not been -- that are not familiar with the science. And again, I come
back to...

THOMAS: The Institute of Medicine recommended allowing patients to use
medical marijuana.

ROCHE: The Institute of Medicine did not. No, that's your distortion of
what the IOM report said. And if people would like to see what it said, I
would suggest they go and read the report for themselves. Even its authors
say that the press has distorted what they actually and said, and what they
didn't say.

WATERS: Let's get to the legal issue now, what the Supreme Court has said
about the laws and individual states and the medical use of marijuana.
Where are we, and where do we go from here?

ROCHE: What the Supreme Court decision said was that it's a violation of
federal law for anybody to set up a business in -- even in a medical
marijuana state and sell marijuana to sick people. That's a violation of
federal law. The Supreme Court also said that there is no evidence that
marijuana, the whole plant, is safe or effective. And that it's not
Congress who decided that, it's not the Supreme Court who decided that,
it's the country's scientists and physicians, who've looked at the research
and said there is no evidence.

WATERS: Did the Supreme Court close door on medical marijuana laws in
individual states?

ROCHE: No, they didn't, actually.

THOMAS: No, I need to explain, that's right.

WATERS: Hang on, Chuck.

ROCHE: They didn't, actually. What they said was you cannot sell marijuana
to sick people. You can't set up a business and claim you have medical
necessity to do that.

WATERS: You can't violate federal laws.

ROCHE: Precisely.

WATERS: OK, Chuck, go.

THOMAS: Sure. OK, thank you. But the Supreme Court didn't overturn the
eight-state medical marijuana law, and I think that's very important for
people to understand, that 99 percent of the marijuana arrests in this
country are made on the state and local level. So you can still change
state laws, and that means that if you have a note from your doctor that
the state police can't arrest you, or you can't be convicted and sentenced
by a state court. So regardless of what the federal government decides to
do, individual patients who are growing and using their own medical
marijuana at home in these states and in other states that we're working to
change the laws in, these patients will still be safe. They won't have to
worry about being arrested.

WATERS: All right. Chuck Thomas, Sue Roche. We haven't heard the end of
this. It probably will end up in the hands of the Congress of the United
States if it ends up anyplace.