POSTURING ON POT

Last week's Supreme Court decision on the medical use of marijuana was
numerically clear-cut, 6 to 3, but all the justices seemed to agree that
the ruling was far from the last word on a contentious question.

In praising the decision to allow federal prosecutions of
therapeutic-marijuana users in the 11 states that have specifically
endorsed the practice, the Bush administration was predictably blinkered in
its views.

Bush drug czar John P. Walters hailed the ruling as a blow against "the
pro-drug politics that are being promoted in America under the guise of
medicine."

The state legislatures that approved carefully regulated marijuana use by
cancer, AIDS and other terminally ill patients for whom pharmaceutical
pain-killers provided no relief knew what they were doing, however.

For whatever reason, drug companies have not come up with balms as
effective as pot is for an estimated 115,000 legal users - legal until last
week, that is. The administration would do better to urge its friends in
the pharmaceutical industry to find ways to match marijuana's anodyne
effects than to go around rounding up cancer patients in agony and dragging
them into court. In their numerous separate decisions, the justices
acknowledged the complexity of the issue in a society where recreational
drug use and its attendant trafficking represent a serious social problem.

Some members of the court's majority expressed sympathy for people like the
plaintiffs, whose dependence on marijuana for relatively pain-free
functioning was branded criminal by federal prosecutors in California.
Angel Raich, whose myriad illnesses include a brain tumor and chronic
wasting syndrome, claims she cannot live without marijuana and her doctor
agrees.

Diane Monson has degenerative spine disease and was partially paralyzed
until she started smoking pot. California's 1996 Compassionate Use Act
allowed both women to use marijuana, and after the feds busted them the
Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruled that state law took precedence
and told the Justice Department to back off. In overruling the appeals
court, the justices cited federal interstate commerce law, the basis for
the Controlled Substances Act. Dissenter Sandra Day O'Connor found that
disingenuous, citing states' rights legal precedents and the tradition of
the states as social laboratories. This is a argument we hope Justice
O'Connor will remember if and when the gay-marriage question reaches the
high court.

Congress should change federal law and let states experiment with medical
marijuana - and eliminate nonsensical bans on federal research.

A vote next week on an appropriations-bill section barring the Justice
Department from medical-marijuana prosecutions is opposed by the Republican
leadership, however, and is unlikely to pass. Other court challenges to the
federal ban are already underway, using due-process and other arguments.

The justices made clear they would consider these additional slants on the
question when they reach the court. The Bush administration, meanwhile,
would be doing the country a favor by cooling it on medical-marijuana
prosecutions. There's plenty of truly dangerous criminal activity out there
to keep prosecutors busy.