SUPREME COURT TO WEIGH MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAWS

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

Beset by a nightmarish list of ailments that includes 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.

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."

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 so-called 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.

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

She said the outcome of the case will determine whether her "husband will
have a wife," her "children a mother."

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. 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 accountant from
Oroville 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. She says it also helps cope with the recent death of her husband,
who suffered from pancreatic cancer.

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.

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 the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, has the power to
regulate the "manufacture, distribution and possession any controlled
substance," even if such activity takes place entirely within one state.