A SETBACK FOR MEDIPOT

Note: After a Supreme Court decision, distributors of medical marijuana
fear a federal shutdown.

Sales were strong at 7494 Santa Monica Boulevard last week. Prices were
neatly posted; customers paid by credit card; computers tracked inventory;
a Better Business Bureau plaque gleamed behind the counter. On the lounge
TV, a video showed Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca praising the
place: "A great success...things are done properly and people who need
services are getting those services."

But the success and services of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center
and similar medical-marijuana distributors across the country could soon be
history. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision declared
that illness is no excuse for legalizing marijuana--not even to ease the
suffering of patients with cancer, AIDS or other life-threatening diseases.
The folks on Santa Monica Boulevard, however respectable, are committing a
federal crime as they collect baggies of Maude's Mighty Moss ("large and
luscious reddish green buds, easy to break and roll," $18 a gram) and Adobe
("compressed green bud, fresh and tasty, with seeds and stems," $4 a gram).

The court's foray into the medipot conflict did little to resolve the
highly politicized issue. Justice Clarence Thomas' opinion was narrow. It
affirmed the government's power to shut down a cannabis cooperative in
Oakland, Calif., but stopped short of invalidating laws passed by nine
states allowing marijuana for medical use. Thomas' opinion skirted the
states'-rights issue at the heart of the case--does California have the
right to legalize medipot?--and a concurring opinion from three liberal
Justices, led by John Paul Stevens, chided the conservative majority for
"overbroad language...given the importance of showing respect for sovereign
states." Stevens also suggested that while medical necessity can't be
invoked by a mass distributor, it might still be a defense against
prosecution of an individual--"a seriously ill patient for whom there is no
other means of avoiding starvation or extraordinary suffering."

That's a good description of the 880 members of the Los Angeles
cooperative, three-quarters of whom have AIDS. The rest suffer from cancer,
multiple sclerosis or other diseases, and all have marijuana prescriptions
fromm licensed physicians. Leanne Orgen, 46, an insurance broker with liver
cancer, buys pot-laced chocolate-chunk brownies--a "miracle drug" for
chemotherapy-induced nausea, she says. Jeffrey Farrington, 32, who has
glaucoma, explains that if he stops smoking marijuana, which relieves
ocular pressure, he loses more than 7 ft. of vision daily. "If they shut us
down," he says, "I'll go blind and I'll watch my friends die of AIDS."

Two years ago, the Institute of Medicine concluded that marijuana has
potential therapeutic value. Polls show nearly three-quarters of Americans
favor medical-marijuana use, and juries are increasingly reluctant to
convict sick people for possession. Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii have set up
state registries for medipot users; Colorado, California, Nevada and Maine
are debating similar moves. Such grassroots enthusiasm carries little
weight with drug warriors, who dispute the scientific data and argue that
marijuana leads to hard narcotics. In an interview with TIME last week,
Attorney General John Ashcroft praised the Supreme Court decision. "We
can't function well as a country if each state makes its own rules about
what's available health-care-wise," he argued. "If Congress wants to exempt
various people from the laws of this country, it's their duty."

That's unlikely. But neither the Justice Department nor the DEA has said
whether the court ruling will cause them to mount a new offensive against
medical-marijuana clinics. And as a practical matter, most individual pot
infractions fall under state and local jurisdiction, and an increasing
number of local law-enforcement officers are refusing to prosecute medipot
cases.

Still, Scott Imler, president of the L.A. center and an epileptic who
smokes weed to control his seizures, fears the worst. "If they march in
here with storm troopers and seize the building, I can't imagine it would
be politically popular," he says. "But maybe they don't care."