MEDICAL MARIJUANA DEBATED IN COURT

SAN FRANCISCO - The Clinton administration is continuing its war against
California's medical marijuana law, arguing in federal court that doctors
who recommend the drug should lose their authority to prescribe legal
medicines.

"It doesn't matter what California says," Justice Department lawyer Joseph
Lobue said Thursday at a hearing on a suit seeking to protect doctors from
punishment for advising their patients to use marijuana. "There is a
national standard."

A doctor who tells a patient that marijuana is the best remedy available
for nausea or other effects of treatments for cancer and AIDS "has
recommended use of a drug that has been found to be unsafe" by Congress and
the Food and Drug Administration, Lobue said. He likened it to a lawyer's
recommending that a client commit perjury.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup must decide whether to extend, expand or
withdraw an order issued by another judge in 1997 barring the federal
government from acting against California doctors who recommended marijuana
to their patients under the 1996 medical marijuana initiative, Proposition 215.

The initiative allowed patients to use marijuana, based on a doctor's
recommendation, without risking prosecution under state drug laws. As a
state measure, however, it could not override federal laws against
marijuana distribution.

The Clinton administration's drug policy chief, Barry McCaffrey, opposed
Prop. 215 and announced after its passage that any doctors who prescribed
or recommended marijuana would lose their federal licenses to prescribe
drugs, would be excluded from Medicare and MediCal and could face criminal
prosecution.

That prompted a lawsuit by a group of doctors and their patients, who said
the government was violating their freedom of speech.

U.S. District Judge Fern Smith issued an injunction protecting doctors,
which will remain in effect until Alsup rules.

On another front, the Justice Department moved to shut down marijuana
cooperatives and clubs that blossomed across the state to distribute the
drug to patients after Prop. 215.

Last month, however, a federal judge ruled that the Oakland Cannabis
Buyers' Cooperative could provide marijuana to seriously ill patients who
had no effective legal therapy available.

The Clinton administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn an
appellate ruling that laid the foundation for the Oakland decision by
recognizing a defense of ``medical necessity'' against federal drug
prosecutions.

At Thursday's hearing, American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Graham Boyd
told Alsup that many doctors remained afraid even to discuss marijuana with
their patients, despite Smith's injunction.

"There is nothing that favors use of marijuana that a physician can say and
not risk punishment," Boyd said. "That is censorship."