MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAWS ON HIGH COURT DOCKET

Justices Take Up Federal-State Issue

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

Beset by ailments that include tumors in her brain and uterus,
seizures, spasms and nausea, she has been able to find comfort only in
the marijuana that is recommended by her doctor.

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

On 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 states have the right to adopt laws allowing the
use of drugs the federal government has banned or 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 maintains those laws violate
federal drug rules and asserts that marijuana has no medical value.

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.

Nevertheless, 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.

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, 47, an accountant from
Oroville whose backyard crop of six marijuana plants was seized in
2002.

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

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 nonmedicinal 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.

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.