MEDICINAL POT USERS CAN BE PROSECUTED, COURT SAYS

Justices Rule That Federal Agents May Arrest Even Sick People

WASHINGTON -- People who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it
to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws, the Supreme
Court ruled Monday, overriding medical marijuana statutes in 10 states.

The court's 6-3 decision was filled with sympathy for two seriously ill
California women who brought the case, but the majority agreed that federal
agents may arrest even sick people who use the drug as well as the people
who grow pot for them.

Justice John Paul Stevens, an 85-year-old cancer survivor, said the court
was not passing judgment on the potential medical benefits of marijuana,
and he noted "the troubling facts" in the case. However, he said the
Constitution allows federal regulation of homegrown marijuana as interstate
commerce.

The Bush administration has taken a hard stand against state medical
marijuana laws, but it was unclear how it would respond to the new
prosecutorial power. Justice Department spokesman John Nowacki would not
say whether prosecutors would pursue cases against individual users.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the court's "overreaching
stifles an express choice by some states, concerned for the lives and
liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana differently."

The women who brought the case expressed defiance.

"I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. I don't really have a choice
but to, because if I stop using cannabis, I would die," said Angel Raich of
Oakland, Calif., who suffers from ailments including scoliosis, a brain
tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain. She says she smokes marijuana
every few hours.

Diane Monson, an accountant who lives near Oroville, Calif., has
degenerative spine disease and grows her own marijuana plants. "I'm going
to have to be prepared to be arrested," she said.

The ruling does not strike down California's law, or similar ones in
Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and
Washington state. However, it may hurt efforts to pass laws in other states
because the federal government's prosecution authority trumps states' wishes.

John Walters, director of national drug control policy, defended the
government's ban. "Science and research have not determined that smoking
marijuana is safe or effective," he said.

California's law, passed by voters in 1996, allows people to grow, smoke or
obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. Monson
and Raich contend that traditional medicines do not provide the relief that
marijuana does.

California has been the battleground state for medical marijuana. In 2001,
the Supreme Court ruled in a California case that the federal government
could prosecute distributors despite their claim that the activity was
protected by medical necessity.

Two years later the justices rejected a Bush administration appeal that
sought power to punish doctors for recommending the drug to sick patients.
That case, too, was from California.