SUPREME COURT ACCEPTS MEDICAL-MARIJUANA ISSUE

WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court entered the debate over medical marijuana
Monday, 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 administrations effort to bar
a California group from providing the drug to seriously ill patients for
pain and nausea relief.

Eight states in addition to California have medical-marijuana laws in place
or approved by voters: Nevada, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon,
Washington, 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.

A lower court decision allowing the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative to
distribute the drug "threatens the governments 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 groups lawyer, Annette P. Carnegie, said Monday 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.

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.

Californias 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 imposing such a ban. But the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, saying the government did not
disprove the clubs evidence that the drug was "the only effective treatment
for a large group of seriously ill individuals."

Last 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.

The Supreme Court also agreed Monday to hear an appeal by a condemned killer
from Texas whose lawyers say he is mentally retarded. The court said it will
use the case of Johnny Paul Penry to clarify how much opportunity jurors in
death-penalty cases must have to consider the defendants mental capacity.