MEDICAL MARIJUANA SALES AT STANDSTILL

Co-op To Stop Selling Pot For Now

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative on
Tuesday not to resume dispensing marijuana as medicine, at least until the
high court decides whether to review a lower court's ruling on the matter.

"This is just a small bump in the road," said the cooperative's attorney,
Robert Raich. "The important decisions in this case are going to be coming
later."

But for at least a few months, Californians who claim a medical necessity
to use the drug will have no legal right to do so.

Cooperative executive director Jeff Jones wondered aloud Tuesday what could
be wrong with our nation "when people are sick and dying, to have the top
court say, 'Give us a few months -- we'll get back to you.'"

The Justice Department, which sought the high court's action, would not
comment Tuesday.

Californians in 1996 approved Proposition 215, which was meant to let
seriously ill patients with a doctor's assent get and use marijuana without
fear of prosecution. Cancer and AIDS patients use the drug's
appetite-boosting effect to combat nausea and weight loss; others use it to
fight symptoms of glaucoma, arthritis, migraine, multiple sclerosis and
other ills.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer issued a temporary injunction closing
the 2,500-member Oakland cooperative and five other Northern California
clubs in 1998 after the government argued federal law bans all marijuana
distribution and use, regardless of state law.

Last September, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal told Breyer to
reconsider the case and let the cooperative make a medical necessity
argument. Last month, Breyer ruled the government had failed to dispute
this argument, so he had little choice but to let the cooperative start
dispensing marijuana again.

The Justice Department sought the Supreme Court's review of the 9th Circuit
decision . Congress has given the Attorney General and the Secretary of
Health and Human Services the power to dictate marijuana policy, the
department claimed: "It has not left that determination to individual
courts or juries -- much less to private organizations like the Oakland
Cannabis Buyers."

The court voted 7-1 to stay the lower courts' orders. Justice John Paul
Stevens dissented, saying the government "failed to demonstrate that the
denial of necessary medicine to seriously ill and dying patients will
advance the public interest or that the failure to enjoin the distribution
of such medicine will impair the orderly enforcement of federal criminal
statutes."

Justice Stephen Breyer disqualified himself from the case; he's the brother
of the U.S. District Judge before whom this case pends. All this action
surrounds a temporary injunction the government sought to keep the Oakland
cooperative from dispensing the drug while the full case is briefed and
argued. Raich said he doesn't expect any progress will be made on getting
the full case before a jury until the injunction is sorted out.