U.S. VOICES THREAT ON POT RX

Argues that doctors urging use be barred from prescribing

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 Medi-Cal 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."

He said the current injunction protected doctors from punishment for
recommending marijuana but left them potentially vulnerable to
criminal prosecution for aiding and abetting if the government decided
a doctor had tried to help a patient obtain the drug.

Lobue, the government's lawyer, denied that federal authorities were
threatening criminal prosecution but said doctors who suggested the
use of any illegal drug risked losing their right to participate in
federally regulated programs, including drug prescription.