WAITING TO INHALE

The Supreme Court would tell us that Monday's decision on Gonzales vs.
Raich is not about drugs.

The decision on whether sick people can use marijuana, six of nine
justices agreed, is really about interstate commerce - even if a
person is growing marijuana for his or her own use.

Beyond the Supreme Court, some support the decision because they see a
need for federal oversight. Ten states - California, Alaska, Colorado,
Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington - allow
the medical use of marijuana for their residents, based on a doctor's
prescription. The Supreme Court decision supposedly will not strike
down the medical marijuana laws in these states.

Yet, people in these states who use pot to ease nausea and other
ailments can now be arrested by federal agents.

Justice John Paul Stevens, an 85-year-old cancer survivor, said the
court wasn't passing medical judgment on marijuana.

But isn't it?

Dating to the 1930s and "Reefer Madness," marijuana remains the street
drug with a particularly evil reputation as a gateway drug to "harder"
drugs. Any beneficial use the drug might hold has been largely pushed
aside.

It remains among the handful of drugs unacknowledged for any medical
benefit - except in those 10 states. There, legislators have taken the
steps to see that patients whose doctors believe marijuana can ease
their symptoms have access to marijuana as they would other drugs.

Derivatives of heroin, morphine and codeine can be dispensed for
medical use without fear of violating interstate commerce laws. These
substances are kept in medical lockboxes, with running inventories on
what and how much is dispensed.

The parameters for dispensing painkillers to patients can be so tight
that family members begging for more drugs on behalf of patients with
only a few days of life left in them can receive the ludicrous warning
that their dying loved one could become addicted.

Amphetamines and depressants are accepted as having bona fide medical
uses, too, though they also can be addictive and produce undesirable
side effects.

Though proponents of medical marijuana argue the drug eases the
queasiness of nausea and encourages appetites in some withering cancer
patients, and some doctors have prescribed it, marijuana doesn't seem
as if it will ever gain the reputation of a drug that, in some cases,
can do some good.

So, our medical system dispenses the painkiller OxyContin, intended
for cancer patients but addictively picked up at the street level,
while it ignores another avenue of possible relief.

The Bush administration has taken a hard line on state medical
marijuana use. Now the highest court in the land has, too.

And marijuana, which could help some of the sickest people in the
country, remains an outlaw - even when some states have determined
otherwise.

Ironic, isn't it, for a president and Supreme Court that have pushed
for states' rights over federal regulation?