MEDICAL MARIJUANA GOES TO COURT

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it would decide whether the
government has the authority to prevent sick patients from using
marijuana with a doctor's recommendation.

The California case tests whether the federal government - which
maintains there is no medical benefit to marijuana - can block sick
patients from using cannabis and prosecute them or their suppliers.

"I'd like to see the Supreme Court decide and let us know exactly what
limits Proposition 215 has or doesn't have," Steve Jones, Yuba
County's chief deputy district attorney, said of California's medical
marijuana law. "We could all breathe a sigh of relief knowing if we're
complying or not."

The case affects Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada,
Oregon and Washington state. They have medical marijuana laws similar
to California's allowing patients to grow, use or receive marijuana if
they have a doctor's recommendation.

"There are so many states that have medical marijuana laws, I don't
understand, if they do block it, how they can get away with it, when
so many people want it," said Bonnie Metcalf, a medical marijuana
activist in Yuba-Sutter.

The case began after several raids on California medical marijuana
clubs and individual growers over the past few years. Two ill medical
marijuana patients, fearing their supplies might dry up, sued Attorney
General John Ashcroft and ultimately 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 Angel Raich, the 38-year-old Oakland woman
who brought the case. She 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 after prescription drugs failed.

After the Bush administration lost the Raich case, it appealed to the
justices, arguing that state laws making exceptions for medical
marijuana are trumped by federal drug laws.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the court that Congress passed
the Controlled Substances Act to control "all manufacturing,
possession and distribution of any" drug it lists, including marijuana.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in placing an injunction
against prosecuting Raich and another woman for using marijuana, ruled
in December that the federal law outlawing marijuana does not apply to
patients whose doctors have recommended the drug.

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.

Pregerson wrote that using marijuana on a doctor's advice is
"different in kind from drug trafficking." The court added that "this
limited use is clearly distinct from the broader illicit drug market."

But Olson told the justices that the states are not free to regulate
controlled substances "without any federal regulation."

The high court will hear the case sometime next winter.

Patients' rights groups immediately weighed in on the
issue.

"The Supreme Court has a chance to protect the rights of patients
everywhere who need medical cannabis to treat their afflictions," said
Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access.

Doctors are already free to recommend marijuana. The high court last
fall refused to hear a separate Bush administration appeal of an order
blocking the Justice Department from punishing physicians for
discussing marijuana with patients who use it to help them eat,
relieve pain and to limit seizures.

The case the justices agreed to review is an outgrowth of their 2001
decision, in which the court said that medical marijuana clubs could
not dole out medical marijuana based on the so-called "medical
necessity" of patients, even if they have a doctor's
recommendation.

The justices only addressed the issue of a so-called "medical
necessity defense" being at odds with the Controlled Substances Act,
which says marijuana, like heroin and LSD, has no medical benefits and
cannot be dispensed or prescribed by doctors.

In that decision, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court
left several questions unresolved, including whether the government
could interfere with the states to make their own medical marijuana
laws.

Gerald Uelmen, a scholar at the Santa Clara University School of Law,
said Thomas' opinion invited new challenges.

"The court opened this door," he said.

The case is Ashcroft v. Raich, 03-1454.