HOW TO TREAT TERMINALLY ILL? LET 'EM SUFFER

I've got that all-over tingly feeling not felt since Martha Stewart was put
away and America's mean streets made safe again.

I'm talking, of course, about Monday's Supreme Court ruling against
state-sanctioned medical marijuana use that will keep the terminally ill
and chronic pain sufferers from firing up a marijuana joint, getting stoned
and, in addition to risking acute munchies, enjoying a temporary reprieve
from hellish suffering.

Thank G-d we've got that particular homeland security problem under
control. Why, in the age of terror, one can never be too careful with dying
people who have nothing left to lose.

With rulings like this, alas, comedy is doomed.

The high court's 6-3 decision, in fact, had little to do with whether
suffering people deserve relief, but whether the federal government has
authority over states that have authorized medical marijuana use. To date,
11 states have such laws: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii,
Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

The court ruled that even though medical marijuana may be homegrown and not
for sale, it nevertheless falls under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

While lawyers hash out the legal intricacies, normal people are left
wondering whether the Supreme Court has been partaking of the evil weed.
Exceptions would be dissenters Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas.

Who, after all, gets hurt when dying or sick people smoke pot?

Quick aside to the feds: When my spine is disintegrating from cancer and
I'm blind from glaucoma and I can't take a breath without agonizing pain,
I'm gonna toke up, OK? Just fyi.

It seems remote to ridiculous that federal agents now will start arresting
sick people for getting high, though stranger things can and do happen. Who
could have imagined the scene we witnessed when then-Attorney General Janet
Reno decided it was time for little Elian Gonzalez to get on back to Cuba?
(I supported Elian's return to his father, by the way, but I must have been
stoned to think we could accomplish a family reunion without a SWAT team
and automatic weapons.)

Ironically, the Supreme Court ruling follows a study by Harvard professor
Jeffrey Miron recommending that the U.S. legalize and tax marijuana
(prohibitioncosts.org). Endorsed by some 500 economists, including Milton
Friedman, the report noted the high cost of marijuana prohibition -- about
$7.7 billion annually -- and the boon to the economy that an estimated $6.2
billion per year in taxes would provide.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the court's decision, offered a
glimmer of hope when he noted that Congress could change the law to allow
for medicinal uses of marijuana. By any measure, such a legal shift is long
overdue and likely would be hugely popular.

In an unscientific poll posted Monday on MSNBC's Web site, self-selecting
respondents were asked: "Should the federal government prosecute medical
marijuana users, now that it has been given the OK by the Supreme Court?"

By midday, more than 63,000 had responded, with 88 percent saying "no." Ten
percent said "yes," and 2 percent weren't sure. (Don't worry,
two-percenters. It wears off in about three hours and then you can make up
your mind.)

Otherwise, more than 60 U.S. and international health organizations,
including the American Public Health Association and the American Nurses
Association, support allowing sick people to use marijuana under a doctor's
care, according to the marijuana advocacy group NORML. (Go to norml.org for
a list and other information.) Others, including the American Cancer
Society and the American Medical Association, favor more research into the
medical uses of marijuana, according to NORML.

As absurd as Monday's ruling seems, advocates for medical marijuana are not
optimistic that Congress will have the courage to pass more reasonable
marijuana laws. Which raises the question: Whatever happened to
compassionate conservatism?

What's more conservative, after all, than getting the federal government
out of private, victimless, state-sanctioned decisions? And what's more
compassionate than letting a woman with brain cancer feel a little less
tortured during her final days?

Congress has an opportunity to demonstrate how compassionate conservatism
works by passing a bipartisan measure -- the "States' Rights to Medical
Marijuana Act" (HR 2087) -- that recently was reintroduced. Defeated
previously, the act would change marijuana's classification so that doctors
could prescribe it under certain circumstances without altering current
laws related to recreational use.

Thanks to the triumph of common sense over Prohibition, I can drink to that.