SUPREME COURT AGREES TO RULE ON MEDICAL USAGE OF MARIJUANA

Justices To Hear Case Between Calif. Group, Clinton Administration

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court entered the debate over medical
marijuana yesterday, agreeing to decide whether the drug can be provided to
patients out of "medical necessity" even though federal law makes its
distribution a crime.

The justices said they will hear the Clinton administration's effort to bar
a California group from providing the drug to seriously ill patients for
pain and nausea relief.

A lower court decision allowing the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative to
distribute the drug "threatens the government's ability to enforce the
federal drug laws," government lawyers said.

But the California group says that for some patients, marijuana is "the
only medicine that has proven effective in relieving their conditions or
symptoms."

The group's lawyer, Annette P. Carnegie, said yesterday the federal
Controlled Substances Act does not prohibit the distribution of marijuana
for medical reasons.

"Those choices, we believe, are best made by physicians and not by the
government," she said. Marijuana has been effective in relieving nausea in
cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, weight loss in HIV-positive
patients and in reducing pain, she said.

Eight states in addition to California have medical-marijuana laws in place
or approved by voters: Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, Washington,
Nevada and Colorado. Residents of Washington, D.C., voted in 1998 to allow
the medical use of marijuana, but Congress blocked the measure from
becoming law.

Justice Department lawyers said Congress has decided that marijuana has "no
currently accepted medical use."

In August, the Supreme Court barred the California organization from
distributing marijuana while the government pursued its appeal.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer did not participate in the case. His brother,
Charles, a federal trial judge in San Francisco, previously barred
distribution of marijuana only to have his decision reversed by a federal
appeals court.

California's law, passed by the voters in 1996, authorizes the possession
and use of marijuana for medical purposes upon a doctor's recommendation.

The Oakland group said its goal is "to provide seriously ill patients with
safe access to necessary medicine so that these individuals do not have to
resort to the streets."

But the federal Controlled Substances Act includes marijuana among the
drugs whose manufacture and distribution are illegal.

In January 1998, the federal government filed a lawsuit against the Oakland
club, asking a judge to ban it from providing marijuana.

Judge Charles Breyer issued a preliminary order for such a ban. But the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, saying the government did not
disprove the club's evidence that the drug was "the only effective
treatment for a large group of seriously ill individuals."

In May, Breyer issued a new order allowing the Oakland group to provide
marijuana to patients who needed it.

In the appeal granted Supreme Court review, Justice Department lawyers said
the appeals court "seriously erred" in deciding the federal law allowed a
medical-necessity defense.

The Oakland club's lawyers said "the voters of California have spoken" in
approving the medical-marijuana measure. Congress has not explicitly barred
a medical necessity defense against the federal anti-drug law, the lawyers
added.

In other action yesterday, the court:

Heard arguments on how to judge when race plays too large a role in drawing
election districts. The North Carolina case is a follow-up to the justices'
landmark 1993 ruling that election districts drawn to help minorities might
violate white voters' rights.

The justices are expected to issue a decision by July. The ruling is likely
to determine the racial makeup of voting districts nationwide that is is
due to follow this year's census.

Said it will use a dispute over health care benefits paid to a man injured
in a car accident to clarify whether health plans can sue to enforce some
requirements. A California company says it can sue in federal court to
force a man to give back his health benefits because he later got payment
from another source.

Turned down a challenge by South Carolina gambling operators against the
state's new ban on possession of video gambling machines. The gambling
operators said the ban, which took effect in July when the state outlawed
video gambling, amounted to the government's unlawful taking of their
property without payment.

Let stand a $153,660 damage award to an Illinois high school student who
was expelled after someone gave him an envelope containing a powder that
looked like cocaine, but wasn't. The court turned down school officials'
arguments that they could expel the youth for possessing a drug
"look-alike" without letting him question the students who testified
against him, or know their identities.