THE COURT CHOKES

What are they smoking? The current Supreme Court majority, the current
Congress, and the current administration all would doubtless describe
themselves as strict constructionists and states'-rights advocates. As
in, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people." That's the Tenth Amendment --
the final piece of polishing applied to the Constitution by the
Founding Fathers so as to ensure the proper degree of constructive
local autonomy.

So why is that twice now, since the beginning of the year, these
branches of government -- acting singly or in unison -- have gone out
of their way to flout that principle? The echoes have barely begun to
subside from the Schiavo case -- with its egregious congressional
override of the authority of Florida's courts, aided and abetted by
the Bush administration. And now we have the other branch of
government, the Supreme Court itself, getting into the act of
deconstructing strict constructionism with its 6-3 decision imposing a
de facto federal veto on medical-marijuana legislation in the states.

What makes the court's ruling even more troubling is that, while it
doesn't invalidate outright the state laws in question, it fails to
provide any clue as to how such laws might be rewritten so as to stay
within bounds of the newly defined federal writ. Indeed, the decision
would make such good-faith efforts irrelevant. Eschewing the kind of
clear guidelines that characterized Roe v. Wade, Monday's ruling
merely says to the states: Do as you will; we'll override you as we
see fit.

Basically, what the court did was to classify the prescription of
marijuana not as a medical matter but as one having to do with
interstate commerce, relegating its control to the same
law-enforcement agencies -- the Drug Enforcement Administration, for
example -- that are currently charged with the interdiction of crack
cocaine. According to the federal Controlled Substance Act of 1970 --
rushed into passage during a time of reaction against the easy-riding
attitudes of the 1960s -- marijuana in whatever form and employed for
whatever purpose is illicit. So bring on the crime-busters!

Never mind that marijuana has proved in clinical trials, as well as in
actual practice, to be the only palliative to which a large number of
patients with a wide variety of serious ailments are responsive. The
most obvious way in which its efficacy has been demonstrated is as an
antidote to the hardships afflicting cancer patients undergoing
chemotherapy. What Monday's court decision does, unmistakably, is put
both the prescribing physician and the suffering granny who is using
the stuff in jurisdictions like California under a threat of
prosecution.

We don't know what the short-term remedy is to this state of affairs
- -- short of hoping that the federal oversight agencies, whose scope in
the matter is now both arbitrary and absolute, exercise a proper
degree of restraint and caution.

In the long term, Monday's decision makes as good an argument as any
for continued vigilance -- both indirectly, as voters, and directly,
as duly elected representatives of the people -- over future
appointments to the federal judiciary.