COURT'S POT OPINION TRUMPS STATES' RIGHTS

Medical marijuana tops the Supreme Court's agenda and part of our
nation gasps with indignation. Another part sighs exasperation. Most
folks just cut up.

(http://www.medicalmarijuanaprocon.org/pdf/raichdecision.pdf)(Full
text of Supreme Court's medical marijuana opinion)

The image of Diane Monson toking through a 1960s-looking bong in her
Oroville Calif., home was too good to pass up on nightly news shows.
California's liberal medical pot law gives Jay Leno weekly fodder. He
once said joked that a movie of pot-smoking cancer patient Todd
McCormick's life might be called the "Fresh Pot of Bel Air."

Hardy har.

Two terminally ill California women, including Monson, use marijuana
under doctors' orders to relieve symptoms. They sought a federal
court ruling to prevent their arrest under federal laws for behavior
permitted under state law.

The Supreme Court held that the feds could bust the women and any
other medicinal marijuana users in the 12 states that allow it.

Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas's finely worded
dissents warned of grave constitutional - not criminal or medical -
consequences for this ruling. Their dissent criticizes the use of
federal drug law to override specific state laws permitting
activities that never cross state lines. Neither plaintiff in this
case bought or sold marijuana outside of California. The majority
opinion extends federal authority to activities that both O'Connor
and Thomas warn have no federal implication.

Some might call that judicial activism.

States have moved at different speeds to address medical marijuana.
Iowa state Sen. Joe Bolkcom couldn't get his bill out of committee
this year. Illinois hasn't addressed it.

It seems clear that states and the federal government could regulate
medical marijuana just as they regulate other narcotics with proven
medical relief. Hundreds of cases nationwide prove marijuana to be
useful and safe for pain relief. Talk-show host Montel Williams says
it helps ease his multiple sclerosis symptoms. South Dakotan Matthew
Ducheneaux proved it helped control crippling muscle spasms, until he
was busted. Ducheneaux died in his sleep when he swallowed a mouth
guard necessary to control jaw spasms.

This week's Supreme Court opinion casts judgment on the reach of
federal drug law, not on the usefulness of medical marijuana.

Twelve states conducted detailed debate in statehouse chambers. They
worked out processes that permit seriously ill patients to consult
their physicians and in some cases, receive a specific type of
treatment in their own homes. The Supreme Court stepped into those
statehouses, into those doctor's offices and into individual homes.

That's three steps too far.

[Sidebar]

Majority opinion

The question before us, however, is not whether it is wise to enforce
the statute in these circumstances; rather, it is whether Congress'
power to regulate interstate markets for medicinal substances
encompasses the portions of those markets that are supplied with
drugs produced and consumed locally. Well-settled law controls our
answer. The Controlled Substances Act is a valid exercise of federal
power, even as applied to the troubling facts of this case.

Justice John Paul Stevens

Dissents

Even if intrastate cultivation and possession of marijuana for one's
own medicinal use can properly be characterized as economic, and I
question whether it can, it has not been shown that such activity
substantially affects interstate commerce.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never
been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has
had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. 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.

Justice Clarence Thomas