MARIJUANA LAWSUIT IS DISMISSED

In A Class-Action Suit, 160 Plaintiffs Challenged A Government Ban On
Medical Use Of The Drug.

Calling for a scientific determination of marijuana's value as a medicine,
a federal judge yesterday dismissed an unusual class-action lawsuit
challenging the constitutionality of the government ban on medical use of
the drug.

U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz said that although a handful of people had
been given the drug under a federal "compassionate-use program" since the
1970s, the government is not legally obligated to extend that program to
all citizens.

Katz described the compassionate-use program as flawed and "somewhat
strange." But, he wrote, "while there is certainly a disparity in treatment
in this case, that disparity is neither 'invidious nor irrational.' " He
said that a decision to end the program by attrition was not an
infringement of equal-protection principles.

The Justice Department in 1978 settled a lawsuit that challenged the
government's ban on marijuana use by implementing the compassionate-use
program. It provides up to 300 government-grown marijuana cigarettes a
month to people found to have serious medical conditions that seemed to
benefit from the drug's use. Eight of the 14 people continue to receive the
drug from the government, which closed the program to new participants in 1992.

Lawrence Elliott Hirsch, the Center City lawyer who last year filed the
proposed class-action lawsuit on behalf of 160 people who believe marijuana
would benefit their health, said he would appeal, first by asking Katz to
reconsider his ruling.

"I really don't think he dealt with the equal-protection issue," Hirsch
said. "How can there be a lawful status for eight people and criminal
status for everyone else?"

Hirsch said Katz's ruling "at least accelerates the path to the Supreme
Court, which will ultimately decide this case."

Hirsch's lawsuit was filed in August 1998 at a time when residents of
California and other states had voted in referendums to legalize the
medical use of marijuana to treat the symptoms of AIDS, cancer, glaucoma
and other diseases.

Hirsch's lawsuit listed 160 plaintiffs nationwide, led by Kiyoshi Kuromiya,
56, an AIDS patient and activist from Philadelphia who says marijuana
helped him gain 40 pounds he had lost through "AIDS wasting syndrome."

Since then, Hirsch added, 500 more people have contacted him asking to be
included as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Katz said yesterday that the government had a "rational reason" for
continuing to supply marijuana to people with whom it had settled a lawsuit
while continuing to oppose legalization for the larger population.

But Katz, a 16-year veteran of the federal bench appointed by President
Ronald Reagan, also urged the government to come up with some scientific
proof to end the debate.