MEDICINAL POT GOES TO SUPREME COURT

Feds Seek A Reversal In Oakland Cannabis Case

The federal government Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review -- and
strike down -- a lower court's ruling that lets the Oakland Cannabis Buyers
Cooperative dispense marijuana as medicine.

If the high court denies the Justice Department's request for review,
people across the western United States will be able to argue they have a
medical necessity for the drug that protects them from federal prosecution.

But if the Supreme Court takes the case and overturns last September's 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, California's medicinal marijuana law
will be gutted.

The Justice Department also filed papers Friday in San Francisco asking the
9th Circuit to keep the Oakland cooperative from dispensing marijuana at
least until October, when the Supreme Court will start its new term and
decide whether to take this case.

"It is disappointing that the federal government is trying to prevent
patients in need from having access to the medicine they require when
former recreational marijuana user George W. Bush is criticizing former
recreational marijuana user Al Gore for being too soft on drugs," said
Robert Raich, the cooperative's attorney.

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.

But U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer closed 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, 9th Circuit appellate judges told Breyer to reconsider the
case and let the cooperative make a medical necessity argument. Breyer last
week ruled the government had failed to dispute this argument, so the
appellate ruling left him little choice but to let the cooperative start
dispensing marijuana again.

In a petition filed Friday at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., the
Justice Department argues the 9th Circuit erred in allowing the medical
necessity defense.

Congress has given the Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and
Human Services the power to dictate marijuana policy, it claims: "It has
not left that determination to individual courts or juries -- much less to
private organizations like the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative."

Marijuana is among the federal Controlled Substances Act's most-restricted
drugs -- deemed to have no currently accepted medical use, to pose a high
risk for abuse and to be unsafe -- so recognizing a medical necessity for
it directly defies Congress' judgment, the petition says.

And the lower court's ruling "threatens the government's ability to enforce
the federal drug laws in the nine states within the Ninth Circuit, which
comprises a population of nearly 50 million people," the petition adds.

Raich said the federal law's phrase "no currently accepted medical use" is
different from "medical necessity."

The former deals with whether the government recognizes a drug's value, he
said, while the latter deals with a person's ability to preserve his or her
own life.

He also said the Supreme Court grants relatively few requests for review,
and this case seems unlikely to attract its interest.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer had asked U.S. Attorney General
Janet Reno not to seek this Supreme Court review. He contended the 9th
Circuit and district court rulings had adequately fleshed out a legal
framework for the state's vague medicinal marijuana law.

Lockyer spokesman Nathan Barankin said Friday he does not know whether
Lockyer will file a brief in support of the 9th Circuit ruling if the
Supreme Court does decide to review the case.

Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state have
passed medicinal marijuana laws similar to California's; all but Maine are
within the 9th Circuit.