MARIJUANA A VALID RX? SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Traditional drugs have done little to help 39-year-old
Angel Raich.

Beset by a nightmarish list of ailments, including tumors in her brain and
uterus, seizures, spasms and nausea, she has been able to find comfort only
in the marijuana recommended by her doctor.

It eases her pain, allows her to rise out of a wheelchair and promotes an
appetite that prevents her from wasting away.

Her Berkeley physician, Frank Lucido, said marijuana "is the only drug of
almost three dozen we have tried that works."

California Law Was First

Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that will determine
whether Raich and similar patients in California and 10 other states can
continue to use marijuana for medical purposes.

At issue is whether federal drug agents can arrest individuals for abiding
by those medical marijuana laws.

California passed the nation's first medical marijuana law in 1996,
allowing patients to smoke and grow marijuana with a doctor's
recommendation. The Bush administration says those laws violate federal
drug rules and asserts that marijuana has no medical value.

"I really hope and pray the justices allow me to live," Raich said as she
crammed marijuana into a contraption that vaporized it inside large balloons.

Clubs Forced into Shadows

The case will address questions left unresolved from the first time the
high court considered the legality of medical marijuana.

In 2001, the justices ruled against clubs that distributed medical
marijuana, saying they cannot do so based on the "medical necessity" of the
patient. The ruling forced Raich's Oakland supplier to close and other
cannabis clubs to operate in the shadows.

The decision did not address whether the government can block states from
adopting their own medical marijuana laws.

The federal government took the offensive after the ruling, often over the
objections of local officials. It began seizing individuals' medical
marijuana and raiding their suppliers.

Nowhere was that effort more conspicuous than in the San Francisco Bay
area, where the nation's medical marijuana movement was founded.

Raich and Diane Monson, the other plaintiff in the case, sued Attorney
General John Ashcroft because they feared their supplies of medical
marijuana might dry up. After a two-year legal battle, they won injunctions
barring the U.S. Justice Department from prosecuting them or their suppliers.

"This has been a nightmare," said Monson, a 47-year-old Oroville accountant
whose backyard crop of six marijuana plants was seized in 2002. "I've never
sued anyone in my life, never mind the attorney general of the United
States of America. For crying out loud, here in California we've voted to
allow medical marijuana."

She regularly uses marijuana on a doctor's recommendation to alleviate back
problems.

Appeals Court Rules in Favor

Last December, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
ruled in Raich's and Monson's favor. It said federal laws criminalizing
marijuana do not apply to patients whose doctors have recommended the drug.

The appeals court said states were free to adopt medical marijuana laws as
long as the marijuana was not sold, transported across state lines or used
for non-medicinal purposes. The other states with such laws are Alaska,
Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and
Washington.

The court ruled that marijuana for medicinal purposes is "different in kind
from drug trafficking" and outside the scope of federal oversight. The same
court last year said doctors were free to recommend marijuana to their
patients. The government appealed, but the Supreme Court justices declined
to hear the case.

Cites Rehnquist's Plight

In June, however, the justices agreed to hear the Raich- Monson case. A
ruling is expected to decide the states' rights issue the court left
unanswered in 2001.

Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement told the justices in briefs that the
government, backed by the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, has the power to
regulate the "manufacture, distribution and possession of any controlled
substance," even if such activity takes place entirely within one state.

Raich said she hopes the chemotherapy Chief Justice William Rehnquist is
undergoing for thyroid cancer "would soften his heart about the issue.

"I think he would find that cannabis would help him a lot."