COURT BACKS FEDERAL BAN ON MARIJUANA

Medical Smokers May Be Prosecuted.

Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe
marijuana to ease pain, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today, concluding
that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had
successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various
illnesses.

Dan Viets, a Columbia attorney and marijuana advocate, says the ruling
doesn't invalidate a Columbia ordinance that allows seriously ill
patients to use marijuana with a doctor's permission.

"It's not the end of medical marijuana laws by any means," Viets said.
"No one who is familiar with the issue anticipates a great new wave of
prosecutions of medical marijuana users."

"This decision only says that the status quo is maintained," he said.
"In other words, the federal government has always maintained that it
has the authority to prosecute - 'to persecute' is the proper word" -
medical marijuana users.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said Congress
could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a
case involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana.
The court said the prosecution of pot users under the federal
Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.

"I'm going to have to be prepared to be arrested," said Diane Monson,
one of the women involved in the case.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said states should be
allowed to set their own rules.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's
economic activity so long as it involves "interstate commerce" that
crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was
homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing
state lines.

"Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not
popular opinion. To date, science and research have not determined
that smoking marijuana is safe or effective," John Walters, director
of National Drug Control Policy, said today.

Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, "but 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."

California's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 1996, allows
people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a
doctor's recommendation. Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana,
Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state have laws similar to California.

In those states, doctors generally can give written or oral
recommendations on marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV and other
serious illnesses.

"The states' core police powers have always included authority to
define criminal law and to protect the health, safety and welfare of
their citizens," said O'Connor, who was joined in her dissent by two
other states' rights advocates: Chief Justice William Rehnquist and
Justice Clarence Thomas.

The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives,
who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years. They
earlier invalidated federal laws dealing with gun possession near
schools and violence against women on the grounds the activity was too
local to justify federal intrusion.

O'Connor 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."

Alan Hopper, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, said local
and state officers handle 99 percent of marijuana prosecutions and
must still follow any state laws that protect patients.

"This is probably not going to change a lot for individual medical
marijuana patients," he said.