MEDICAL POT USERS CAN BE CHARGED

Ruling Doesn't Abolish Laws in 10 States, but Allows Federal Arrests

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 yesterday, 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.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, joined by fellow states' rights
advocates Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas,
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."

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 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.

Since 1979, Virginia law has technically permitted possession or
distribution of marijuana for medical purposes, if the patient has a valid
prescription. Few, if any, Virginia doctors have prescribed marijuana for
their cancer and glaucoma patients as there is no mechanism for dispensing it.

The law was enacted at a time when supporters expected the federal
restrictions to be relaxed.

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.

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 director of national drug-control policy, John Walters, 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 yesterday 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 of the Drug
Policy Alliance, a group working to end the war on drugs. "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, but even medical-marijuana
supporters say it is unlikely Congress would pass a law allowing physicians
to prescribe the drug.