SHOWDOWN OVER MEDICAL MARIJUANA NEARS RULING

OAKLAND, CALIF. -- She is good for two hours. Then the pains start
bullying her again. Her back, her neck, her head, her insides -- all
the warring parts of her body -- rise up to beat her. If she hesitates
to act, they throw her down, throttle her, make her wish she were dead.

So Angel McClary Raich takes more marijuana, buying another two
hours.

Diane Monson is a bit luckier. She can function for up to four hours
before her spine reverts to being her enemy. Then she needs another
dose of cannabis.

In California, Monson and Raich are not so different from about
100,000 other chronically sick people. They are users of medical
marijuana, or cannabis, examples of why the state's voters passed a
law in 1996 legalizing the drug for the seriously ill or dying. But
the U.S. Justice Department considers all marijuana a dangerous
controlled substance. To the federal government, Raich and Monson are
illegal drug users.

That divide is at the heart of Ashcroft vs. Raich, which brought the
two women to the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 29 to plead for their
right to their doctor-recommended medical marijuana and put them in
the headlines for several days.

The Supreme Court arguments were the latest in a series of legal
battles between the women and the federal government. In 2002, Monson
and Raich sued Attorney General John Ashcroft after Monson's house was
raided by Drug Enforcement Administration agents who seized her six
marijuana plants from her patio.

Monson and Raich eventually won an injunction against the raids in the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which the federal
government appealed to the high court. A ruling is expected sometime
before July.

Ashcroft vs. Raich, which debates whether the federal government
exceeded its authority to regulate interstate commerce by imposing
national drug laws on state-sanctioned medical cannabis that is not
sold, transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal
purposes, will have crucial implications for at least 30 pending
federal marijuana cases. The cases all involve medical cannabis
growers, patients and dispensary operators who were raided by federal
agents in several of the 11 states that have legalized medical cannabis.

Ashcroft vs. Raich also is considered important for those watching the
debate over states' rights vs. federal authority.

But for Raich and Monson, the case is personal.

They want to be able to live their lives. Medical marijuana, they say,
makes that possible. Raich, a 39-year-old mother of two teen-agers,
suffers from an inoperable brain tumor, wasting syndrome, tumors in
her uterus, endometriosis and other ailments. She says medical
marijuana is keeping her alive.

Monson, a 47-year-old accountant who lives in the northern California
town of Oroville, has suffered from a degenerative back disorder for
25 years. Without medical cannabis, she says, she would live, but in
such excruciating pain that it would hardly be worth it.

Raich and Monson are worried. The public is sympathetic to their
situations; polls show up to 80 percent of Americans approve of
medical marijuana. But the federal government has remained steadfast
against reclassifying marijuana and has repeatedly rejected
applications from university researchers who want to study the drug as
medicine. During the oral arguments, several Supreme Court justices
raised skeptical questions, concerned that even small amounts of
medical marijuana, obtained for free, were part of a national market
for licit and illicit drugs -- and thus subject to federal
regulations.

Even if the court rules that federal agents can continue to raid
medical marijuana patients and growers, the women say, they will
continue to use marijuana as medicine. They say they have no choice.

Raich has been sick longer, with multiple ailments. As a young teen,
she had scoliosis and wore a back brace. She received the
endometriosis diagnosis at 16. In her 20s, as a mother of young
children, she developed wasting syndrome -- doctors still do not know
why -- and could not keep food down. She started having seizures, and
doctors found a deep brain tumor. Eventually she became partially
paralyzed on one side. In 1995, she ended up in a wheelchair. She was
withering away. She was also in constant pain. Nothing her doctor
prescribed touched it.

In 1997, during a doctor's visit, a nurse who had witnessed Raich's
suffering for years took her aside and asked her if she had ever
considered medical marijuana.

'Really Offended'

Sitting in her den with her husband, Robert, a lawyer whom she met
when he was helping the Oakland medical cannabis cooperative that she
belonged to in its legal struggles with the Justice Department, Raich
recalled how reluctant she was to become a marijuana user.

"I was really offended at the suggestion," said Raich, who is a pale
98 pounds on a 5-foot-4 frame. "I was very conservative. I was taught
that drugs are bad. And I followed the law. I've never even gotten a
speeding ticket."

But one night, Raich said, her daughter approached her. "She wanted to
know why I couldn't do the things that other mommies do. I promised my
children that I would do anything I possibly could to get better."

That night, she said, "I faced my own conservative ways and my own
moral judgments and I realized that because I loved my children so
much and so deeply -- they are my world -- that I would do everything
I possibly could for them."

She asked family members to buy some marijuana on the street. "I
immediately felt relief," she said. "It didn't cure my pain, but it
definitely made me feel better. It didn't make me vomit and it made me
hungry, which I didn't normally feel." She asked her doctor about it,
and he agreed that she should try cannabis as a therapy.

She joined the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, she said, and
found that medical-grade cannabis cultivated for patients was more
potent than street-corner pot. The more she smoked or inhaled, she
said, the more sensations she began feeling. She could eat. She could
move. Within a year and a half, she felt strong enough to learn how to
walk again. After four years in a wheelchair, she put it away.

"The minute I became a medical cannabis user," she said, "I became an
advocate." In fact, Raich found Monson after reading about her. Monson
and her husband had been raided by federal agents in August 2002.
Despite being shown her doctor's note, the agents confiscated the
plants she had spent so much time cultivating.

"It was extremely stressful," Monson said of the raid. She had started
using medical cannabis in 1998, after her doctor of 20 years
recommended it. Many other painkillers they had tried had failed. For
a time, Monson said, she was on Vioxx, which has since been taken off
the market because of safety concerns.

Monson, an avid gardener with an orchard of apple, pear, peach,
apricot, cherry and fig trees, started growing marijuana. "I had some
success the first year. By 2002, I had a pretty good stash," she said.
"I had them in full sun, out in the open, thinking I was in full
compliance with California law."

Earlier this year, when her husband of 25 years was stricken with
pancreatic cancer, Monson gave him medical cannabis to ease his pain
and help increase his appetite. He died six months ago.

"I make oils and tincture and vapors," she said. "I experiment because
the government, which says it's so unhealthy to smoke it, is not
studying it. We're not getting the best delivery system, so we're not
getting the full benefits of a drug that can help so many people."

Monson, a literacy volunteer in Oroville who also manages several
rental properties she owns, said none of her businesses or passions
have suffered since she began using medical cannabis. In fact, they
have thrived.

She plans to grow her marijuana plants again this year.

Raich, too sick to grow her own, is extremely grateful that she has
caregivers growing it for her. She said her brain tumor specialist
told her last May that the tumor had stabilized. "I really consider
cannabis my miracle,' Raich said. "I really owe my life to it, and I'm
not going to let anyone, including the government, take it away from
me."