COURT WILL BOOST OR UNDERMINE STATE'S MARIJUANA LAWS

SAN FRANCISCO -- Cancer is eating away at Creighton Frost. His lymph glands,
thyroid, larynx and many of the muscles on his right side have been removed.
Marijuana, he says, is his only comfort.

Frost used to get the drug from the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, a
city-sanctioned club that openly challenged the federal government -- but
conformed to California law -- by offering marijuana to people with a
doctor's recommendation.

"I'm dying and falling apart a little bit at a time," Frost said. "I want
some way to not have such a miserable death."

Whether marijuana can be doled out to ill patients for pain relief is now up
to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided Monday to hear the federal
government's efforts to ban such use.

Frost, who lives in the San Francisco suburb of San Ramon, has been getting
his marijuana illegally since August, when the court ordered the club to
cease operations at the request of the Clinton administration.

The high court is expected to hear the case next year.

Justice Department lawyers said more than two dozen organizations have been
distributing marijuana for medical purposes in California, Alaska, Hawaii,
Oregon and Washington.

California passed a medical marijuana law in 1996 and those states and four
others -- Arizona, Maine, Nevada and Colorado -- have followed.

It is unclear whether the court will consider solely whether marijuana clubs
violate federal law, or rule on the legality of medical marijuana laws in
their entirety.

Allowing clubs to distribute marijuana "threatens the government's ability
to enforce the federal drug laws," the Justice Department told the high
court.

Jeff Jones, co-founder of the Oakland club, said the cooperative has given
out 4,000 identification cards to members who have a doctor's recommendation
to smoke marijuana.

"We have faith when the Supreme Court hears this case that it will consider
the needs of the patients who are suffering," he said.

Generally, the state laws allow sick and dying patients with a doctor's
recommendation to grow marijuana themselves or obtain it from a so-called
"caregiver." While the laws do not necessarily permit marijuana clubs,
states have allowed them if they cater to sick and dying patients.

Frost and other patients say marijuana settles the stomach, builds weight,
steadies spastic muscles and provides relief from other ailments.

The Justice Department, however, told the high court that marijuana has "no
currently accepted medical use."

In 1998, federal Judge Charles Breyer sided with the government in its
efforts to halt the Oakland club from distributing the drug. An appeals
court reversed, ruling that "medical necessity" is a legal defense.