A DEFEAT FOR USERS OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

State Laws Are Not Defense, Justices Rule

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the medical marijuana movement yesterday,
ruling that the federal government can still ban possession of the drug in
states that have eliminated sanctions for its use in treating symptoms of
illness.

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled that Congress's constitutional
authority to regulate the interstate market in drugs, licit or illicit,
extends to small, homegrown quantities of doctor-recommended marijuana
consumed under California's Compassionate Use Act, which was adopted by an
overwhelming majority of voters in 1996.

The ruling does not overturn laws in California and 10 other states, mostly
in the West, that permit medical use of marijuana. In 2003, Maryland
reduced the maximum fine for medical users of less than an ounce of the
drug to $100.

But the ruling does mean that those who try to use marijuana as a medical
treatment risk legal action by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or
other federal agencies and that the state laws provide no defense.

Writing for the court majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the case was
"troubling" because of users' claims that they needed marijuana to
alleviate physical pain and suffering. But he concluded that the court had
no choice but to uphold Congress's "firmly established" power to regulate
"purely local activities . . . that have a substantial effect on interstate
commerce."

Echoing an argument advanced by the Bush administration, Stevens expressed
concern that "unscrupulous physicians" might exploit the broadly worded
California law to divert marijuana into the market for recreational drugs.

The Bush administration, which has been emphasizing marijuana enforcement
in its anti-drug strategy, hailed the ruling.

"Today's decision marks the end of medical marijuana as a political issue,"
said John P. Walters, President Bush's director of national drug control
policy. "Our nation has the highest standards and most sophisticated
institutions in the world for determining the safety and effectiveness of
medication. Our national medical system relies on proven scientific
research, not popular opinion."

But California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said that "seriously ill
Californians will continue to run the risk of arrest and prosecution under
federal law when they grow and or they use marijuana as medicine."

The ruling, he said, "shows the vast philosophical difference between the
federal government and Californians on the rights of patients to have
access to the medicine they need to survive and lead healthier lives."

Supporters of medical marijuana, noting that Stevens wrote that "the voices
of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls
of Congress," said the fight over federal drug policy will shift to a new
battleground.

"The decision highlights the opportunity we have to go to Congress and
change these laws," said Robert Raich, a lawyer whose wife, Angel Raich,
was one of two women who had sued to block enforcement of federal marijuana
laws against them.

A House bill that would forbid the use of federal funds to prosecute
medical marijuana use in states that permit it was defeated overwhelmingly
last year but will be voted on again soon, advocates of medical marijuana said.

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision represented a victory for the court's
supporters of federal power over its proponents of states' rights.

In two cases in the past decade, the court limited Congress's power to make
laws in the name of regulating interstate commerce, saying that it had
begun to intrude upon local affairs. Backers of medical marijuana had hoped
to apply those precedents in this case, Gonzales v. Raich, No. 03-1454.

But Stevens concluded that the court was still bound by a 1942 Supreme
Court decision that defined interstate commerce broadly to include, under
certain circumstances, even subsistence wheat farming.

Much modern government regulation exists because of this broad definition
of interstate commerce, which permitted the court to uphold, as exercises
of Congress's commerce clause power, laws including New Deal farm controls
and the ban on racial segregation in hotels and restaurants.

Stevens was joined by the court's three other consistent supporters of
federal power, Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G.
Breyer. He also picked up the votes of two justices, Antonin Scalia and
Anthony M. Kennedy, who usually support states' rights.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and
Clarence Thomas dissented.

Writing for the three, O'Connor noted that she "would not have voted for
the medical marijuana initiative" in California, but she chided the
majority for stifling "an express choice by some States, concerned for the
lives and liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana
differently."

In a separate dissent, Thomas added that if "the majority is to be taken
seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes
drives and potluck suppers throughout the 50 states."

The two California women who sued to block federal marijuana enforcement in
California are Diane Monson, who was prescribed marijuana for lower-back
pain, and Raich, who said that she must take the drug at least every two
hours or else she will lose her appetite and die from a "wasting syndrome"
whose medical cause is unknown.

"I don't know how to explain it," she said yesterday. "I just can't swallow
without cannabis."

Monson's home was raided and her marijuana plants seized by federal agents
in 2002; Raich says she receives the drug free from caregivers and joined
Monson's lawsuit because she fears that her marijuana could be seized.
Neither woman has been criminally charged. Raich's suppliers are also in
the case, as John Does One and Two.