SUPREME COURT DENIES REVIEW OF MEDICAL POT LAW

SAN FRANCISCO -- The state Supreme Court turned back a challenge to
California's medical marijuana law Thursday from two counties that
said they were being forced to condone federal drug-law violations by
state-approved pot users.

San Diego and San Bernardino county officials had sued to overturn
Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that legalized medical
marijuana, and a more recent law that required them to issue
identification cards to users who had a doctor's recommendation.

The justices unanimously denied review of an appellate decision in
July that concluded California was free to decide whether to punish
drug users under its own laws, despite the federal ban on marijuana.

The decision is "a momentous victory for countless seriously ill
patients," said Adam Wolf, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer
who defended the state law in the appeals court. He said the counties
should stop wasting money "in a doomed effort to undermine the will
of California voters."

But Thomas Bunton, a deputy San Diego County counsel, said the county
would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

The California law "authorizes people to engage in conduct that's
forbidden by federal law," Bunton said.

He said San Diego and San Bernardino counties particularly objected
to the follow-up statute on identification cards that the Legislature
passed in 2003. The cards, issued by the counties, protect their
holders from arrest by state or local police for possessing small
amounts of medical marijuana.

The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed federal authorities to rely on
U.S. drug laws to prosecute medical marijuana patients and their
suppliers, and to shut dispensaries in California and the 11 other
states with laws similar to Prop. 215. But the court has not
prevented the states from deciding which drugs to prohibit under
their own laws.

In a separate case, the city of Garden Grove (Orange County) has
asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a California appellate
ruling requiring police to return a patient's medical marijuana after
state charges were dismissed. That case also involves a potential
conflict between federal and state law.

In the counties' lawsuit, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San
Diego ruled July 31 that federal law doesn't require states to impose
criminal penalties for marijuana possession. The purpose of the
federal law, the court said, is "to combat recreational drug use, not
to regulate a state's medical practices."

The case is San Diego County vs. San Diego NORML, S166505.