MEDICAL MARIJUANA CASE IN CALIFORNIA

California Case Would Overrule Three Amendments

In California these days, the federal government is single-handedly
trying to debunk two ancient myths which many well-intentioned
Americans have long taught their children. To wit:

1) If you don't like the law, all you need do is follow the proper
procedures to get a change before the appropriate legislative body or
onto your state ballot.

The majority will then determine in an orderly fashion whether your
idea is a good one, and that will be that;

2) The reason the government licenses doctors is simply to guarantee
consumers that would-be physicians have met certain minimal and
well-established standards of training and conduct.

What has now happened in California is that the voters went to the
polls a few years back and overwhelmingly approved the medical use of
marijuana, in cases where a physician recommends that it might be of
use to a specific patient.

But, ignoring the limitations placed on their power by the Ninth and
10th Amendments -- which restrict the federal government to meddling
in only those affairs itemized in the U.S. Constitution -- federal
authorities aren't having any of it.

Answering an ACLU lawsuit which seeks to block the practice, Justice
Department lawyers are now arguing in U.S. District Court in San
Francisco that Washington has the right to punish and even put out of
business California doctors who recommend marijuana use for specific
patients, just as was envisioned by California voters when they went
to the polls in 1996.

"It doesn't matter what California says," snarled Justice Department
lawyer Joseph Lobue, in court last week.

The federal government now threatens to take away the doctors'
licenses to write prescriptions for "controlled" substances --
effectively putting them out of business or forcing them to leave the
country.

And that further violates the doctors' free speech rights under the
First Amendment, the ACLU argues.

(Not content to stop there, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey has also
threatened to bar any such wayward physician from participation in the
Medicare and Medicaid programs -- a bit like threatening to throw
Br'er Rabbit in the briar patch -- and even to bring criminal charges.)

The government action here hinges on a negative, of course -- the fact
that the federal Food and Drug Administration has never "approved"
marijuana for medical use.

But pharmaceutical firms now spend millions of dollars to usher each
new nostrum through the FDA approval process -- and none will bother
to fund clinical trials for marijuana, since there'd be no way to
patent and thus make back their investment.

In recent years, majorities of voters in Alaska, Arizona, California,
Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington state have ruled that
doctors are indeed the right folks to decide when marijuana might be
medically useful for some patients.

It's the federal government which is motivated here not by medical
science or compassion for the sick, but by sheer politics.

The Justice Department's position here is wrong on every count,
betraying a willingness to sacrifice even the lives of the sick for
the sake of bureaucratic empire-building and political expediency.

And that's disgusting.