SMOKED OUT

Supreme Court Bars Marijuana Distribution

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow last week to advocates of marijuana
legalization. By a 7-to-1 margin, on an emergency request from the Clinton
administration, the justices barred a cannabis "buyers club" in Oakland
from dispensing marijuana.

The Oakland club claimed it was selling marijuana strictly for "medicinal"
use, as permitted by California law under Proposition 215, approved by
voters in 1996. Earlier, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco had sided with the buyers club, ruling that "medical necessity"
is a "legally cognizable defense" to the charge of distributing drugs in
violation of federal law.

Accordingly, declared Judge Charles Breyer on behalf of the Ninth Circuit,
the Oakland cannabis buyers' cooperative was free to provide marijuana to
people claiming serious medical conditions: cancer, AIDS or other such
diseases.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Ninth Circuit's ruling out of hand,
with only Justice John Paul Stevens dissenting and Justice Stephen Breyer
recusing himself, because it was his jurist brother who ruled that the
Oakland buyers club could sell marijuana.

The high court's ruling did not go so far as to ban distribution of
marijuana to California patients altogether. Nor did it explicitly rule
Proposition 215 unconstitutional. The justices will take up those issues in
the fall.

Meanwhile, the debate rages on in California about marijuana use for
supposedly medicinal purposes. Not helping the debate is the fact that most
of the sponsors of Proposition 215, as well its financial supporters --
including the billionaire financier George Soros -- are advocates of drug
legalization.

The Proposition 215 campaign was an all-too-clever gambit by the drug
legalization lobby to get its nose under the public policy tent. If the
voters approved marijuana use for medicinal purposes, they reasoned, maybe
they might eventually approve marijuana use for nonmedicinal purposes. And
so on.

But it is still worthwhile to determine, once and for all, whether the
benefits of marijuana use for medicinal purposes outweigh the health
drawbacks. (For instance, a middle-aged person's chances of having a heart
attack increase 500 percent in the first hour after smoking marijuana,
according to an American Medical Association report).

As it happens, UCSD has just announced a new cannabis study center, funded
with $3 million from the Legislature (and millions of federal research
dollars to come). The center will conduct not only basic research on
medicinal marijuana, but also clinical trials.

It is noteworthy that the chief author of Proposition 215, San Francisco
cannabis club founder Dennis Peron, is opposed to the UCSD center and its
marijuana study. His protests suggest he is wary of what the science will
reveal.