MED POT GIVEN SETBACK

Supreme Court Rules Federal Arrests Legal, Despite State Laws Allowing Use

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 Monday how it will respond to the
new prosecutorial power. Justice Department spokesman John Nowacki
would not say whether prosecutors will 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," said Angel Raich of
Oakland, Calif., who suffers from ailments including scoliosis, a
brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain. "I don't really have a
choice but to, because if I stop using cannabis, I would die."

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 might 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.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Monday that "people
shouldn't panic ... there aren't going to be many changes."

Local and state officers handle nearly all marijuana prosecutions and
must still follow any state laws that protect patients.

"I think it would look bad if the federal government focused its
prosecution authority on a sick person," said Daniel Abrahamson, with
the Drug Policy Alliance. "Individual patients growing for their own
purposes have not been the targets of the federal authorities. We hope
that it stays that way."

Congress could be the next stop for the debate.

While there are other legal options for patients, Stevens wrote,
"perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the
democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these
[California women] may one day be heard in the halls of Congress."

O'Connor was joined in her dissent by two other states'-rights
advocates: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence
Thomas.

While conservatives might not necessarily support medical marijuana,
they have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years.

O'Connor, who like Rehnquist has had cancer, said she would have
opposed California's medical marijuana law if she were a voter or a
legislator. But she said the court was overreaching to endorse "making
it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own
home for one's own medicinal use."

Thomas said the ruling was so broad "the federal government may now
regulate quilting bees, clothes drives and potluck suppers throughout
the 50 states."

The case was hatched when federal agents seized Monson's backyard crop
of six marijuana plants in 2002. She and Raich sued then-U.S. Attorney
General John D. Ashcroft, asking for a court order letting them smoke,
grow or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home raids or other
intrusion by federal authorities.

They claimed protection under the Constitution, which says Congress
may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it
involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state borders.

The case is Gonzales v. Raich, 03-1454.

In other cases, the Supreme Court:

Held 6-3 that foreign cruise lines sailing in U.S. waters must provide
better access for disabled passengers. Ruled in favor of the federal
government in a dispute with Alaska over ownership of submerged lands
in the Glacier Bay area. Refused to consider reinstating a lawsuit
that accuses federal officials of discriminating against male athletes
in enforcing equal opportunities for women. Agreed to consider in its
next term beginning in October whether a New York man may proceed with
his $4.4 million lawsuit against federal agents after they wrongly
raided his house.