COURT TAKES CASE OVER STATE LAWS FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA

SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide
whether the federal government can prosecute sick people who smoke
marijuana on the advice of a doctor.

The case involves the Bush administration's appeal of a case it lost
last year involving two California women who say pot is the only drug
that eases their chronic pain and other medical problems.

The case also affects Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine,
Nevada, Oregon and Washington state, which have laws similar to
California's allowing patients to grow, use or receive marijuana if
they have a doctor's recommendation. Thirty-five states in all have
passed legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value.

The move was applauded by Dr. Robert Killian, a Seattle family
physician who helped draft Washington's medical-marijuana law. "I
trust the Supreme Court will uphold states' rights," he said. "This
might further protect patients from federal law enforcement."

The high court will take up the case sometime next winter.

Doctors are already free to recommend marijuana, since the justices
refused last fall to let the Justice Department punish physicians for
discussing marijuana with their patients.

The case the Supreme Court accepted began after several raids on
California medical-marijuana clubs and individual growers over the
past few years.

Two ailing marijuana users, fearing their supplies might dry up, sued
Attorney General John Ashcroft and won injunctions barring the Justice
Department from prosecuting them or their suppliers.

"I'm real excited and I'm real nervous and real afraid because my life
is on the line here," said one of the plaintiffs, Angel Raich, 38, of
Oakland, Calif., who suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic
nausea, fatigue and pain.

She and her doctor say marijuana, which she uses every few hours, is
the only thing that keeps her alive.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, ruled
in the women's favor in December, saying the federal law outlawing
marijuana does not apply to patients whose doctors have recommended
the drug.

Appeals Judge Harry Pregerson wrote that states are free to adopt
medical-marijuana laws so long as the marijuana is not sold,
transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal purposes. He
said using marijuana on a doctor's advice is "different in kind from
drug trafficking."

The Bush administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing
that state laws making exceptions for medical marijuana are trumped by
federal drug laws. The federal Controlled Substances Act says
marijuana, like heroin and LSD, has no medical benefits and cannot be
dispensed or prescribed by doctors.

Washington's law was passed in 1998 as Initiative 692. It gave people
with certain conditions, including HIV, cancer and multiple sclerosis,
the right to possess and use marijuana with a doctor's approval.