HIGH COURT REJECTS APPEAL ON MEDICINAL POT

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court cleared the way yesterday for state laws
allowing ill patients to smoke marijuana if a doctor recommends it.

Justices turned down the Bush administration's request to consider whether
the federal government can punish doctors for recommending or perhaps just
talking about the benefits of the drug to sick patients. An appeals court
said the government cannot.

Nine states have laws legalizing marijuana for people with physician
recommendations or prescriptions: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado,
Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. And 35 states have passed
legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value.

But federal law bans the use of pot under any circumstances.

The case gave the court an opportunity to review its second medical
marijuana case in two years. The last one involved cannabis clubs.

This one presented a more difficult issue, pitting free-speech rights of
doctors against government power to keep physicians from encouraging illegal
drug use.

A ruling for the Bush administration would have made the state medical
marijuana laws unusable.

Some California doctors and patients, in filings at the Supreme Court,
compared doctor information on pot to physicians' advice on "red wine to
reduce the risk of heart disease, Vitamin C, acupuncture, or chicken soup."

The administration argued that public heath -- not the First Amendment
free-speech rights of doctors or patients -- was at stake.

"The provision of medical advice -- whether it be that the patient take
aspirin or Vitamin C, lose or gain weight, exercise or rest, smoke or
refrain from smoking marijuana -- is not pure speech. It is the conduct of
the practice of medicine. As such, it is subject to reasonable regulation,"
Solicitor General Theodore Olson said in court papers.

In states with medical marijuana laws, doctors can give written or oral
recommendations on marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV and other serious
illnesses.

Even some supporters of the laws had expected the Supreme Court to step into
the case. They said the court's refusal to intervene, although it does not
address the merits of the case, could encourage other states to consider
passing medical marijuana laws.

"It finally definitively puts to rest these federal threats against doctors
and patients," said Graham Boyd, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney
representing patients, doctors, and other groups in the case.