MEDICAL MARIJUANA UP IN SMOKE

California's medical-marijuana law would seem a classic case of states'
rights. It was approved by the voters at large in a ballot initiative and
as a law by the state legislature.

The commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution would seem not to apply
because the product was grown entirely in the state, was never bought and
sold and never crossed state lines. And the marijuana was made available to
qualified patients by state-regulated doctor's prescription.

Nine other states, from Maine to Hawaii, have similar laws, so this is
hardly an ill-considered proposition.

But the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6 to 3, didn't see it that way.
Justices ruled that the feds can prosecute patients whose doctors have
prescribed marijuana to ease chronic, debilitating pain.

In asserting federal primacy over marijuana, the majority argued on the
basis of several likelihoods -- the likelihood that medical marijuana would
be diverted to the illegal drug market, the likelihood that unscrupulous
drug dealers would exploit the law, the likelihood that unscrupulous
physicians would over-prescribe and the likelihood that medical marijuana
might find its way out of state.

Conceivably this could happen, but the ruling saddles federal drug agents
with a really small-bore law-enforcement problem. In this particular case,
federal agents, over the protests of the local district attorney, showed up
at the home of Diane Monson, 46, who suffers from a degenerative spine
disease, and tore up the six marijuana plants in her backyard. Monson, who
had a doctor's prescription for the plants, has never been charged.

The court, Congress and the Bush administration have become schizophrenic
about states' rights: They are for them except when they are against them.
It's hard to quarrel with Justice Clarence Thomas' dissent: "If Congress
can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually
anything -- and the federal government is no longer one of limited and
enumerated powers."