METHADONE IN VIRGINIA; MARIJUANA IN CALIFORNIA

America's culture wars are fought on several fronts, including the
nation's courtrooms. Sometimes, sound jurisprudence is a casualty.

At first glance, the case of a far Southwest Virginia woman in jail
for violating terms of her Tazewell County Circuit Court probation may
seem to have little in common with the medical marijuana cases from
California argued Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court.

But there is this shared thread: The cases have undone, or threaten to
undo, the notion that social conservatism opposes judicial activism
and is reluctant to use dubious jurisprudence to achieve desired
outcomes. Judicial overreach has already made a victim of Kimberly
Bucklin, jailed since July (though her sentence was reduced Monday)
for the sin of getting medical treatment for her OxyContin addiction.
Unfortunately for her, the treatment - physician-advised methadone -
doesn't sit well with the Tazewell court. For returning to the
treatment while on probation, Bucklin was thrown in the slammer.

That's a miscarriage of justice, and it's judicial overreach: Neither
Circuit Judge Henry Vanover nor Commonwealth's Attorney Dennis Lee,
whatever their personal or political views may be, is qualified to
determine which among legal treatments is medically appropriate for a
specific patient.

The cases of Diane Monson and Angel Raich - whose home-grown medical
marijuana, though legal under California law, was confiscated in 2002
by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents - are more
complicated.

For starters, marijuana for relief from severe pain is not as widely
accepted medically as, say, methadone for withdrawal from opiate
addiction - in part because research into marijuana's medicinal
properties is constrained by the drug's role in America's culture wars.

Nor has the high court yet decided the California cases. But the tenor
of the justices' questioning during oral arguments suggests, though it
is no guarantee, the court will rule that federal anti-marijuana laws
override laws in the 11 states permitting medical marijuana.

This, though, has been a court interested in expanding the rights of
states vis-^-vis congressional regulation. It has invalidated a
federal law against guns near schools, for example, on the grounds it
did not involve interstate commerce. If this is true of guns, which
are rarely homemade, how is it not also true of home-grown marijuana?

A decision to the contrary would smack more of rationalization for
political outcomes than of commitment to principled legal consistency.