COURT REJECTS DEA PRESS TO CENSOR DOCTORS

WASHINGTON -- In a major legal breakthrough for advocates of marijuana as
medicine, the Supreme Court rebuffed an effort by the federal government to
stop doctors from suggesting that treatment option to their patients.

The justices left intact a federal appeals court ruling that doctors have a
constitutional right to recommend marijuana, as long as they do not help
their patients violate federal law in obtaining the illegal drug.

The lower court blocked the Drug Enforcement Administration from taking away
a doctor's federal license to prescribe drugs as a penalty for proposing
that a patient smoke marijuana. The federal agency was also barred from
starting an investigation of a doctor that could lead to loss of license.

Dr. Marcus Conant, the San Francisco doctor who led the challenge to the
DEA, said the court's action "means that I can do my job again and have real
conversations with my patients about medical marijuana as part of their
treatment options."

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, led by the nation's
"drug czar," John P. Walters, said in a statement that the court order dealt
only with doctor-patient relationships, "not the efficacy of smoked
marijuana as medicine." The office added that the "cultivation and
trafficking of marijuana remains a federal offense." The Justice Department
declined comment.

The movement to promote marijuana as a medicine has been frustrated for
years by the federal government's refusal to relax its controls on that drug
as an illegal substance. Marijuana has been on the most-restricted list of
illegal drugs since the list was approved by Congress in 1970, and the
government has denied repeated requests to reclassifiy it.

Although there is an ongoing debate about whether marijuana has any value as
a medicine, the government has steadfastly insisted that it has no accepted
medical uses.

The movement to promote the drug as a form of medical treatment began to
gather momentum in 1996, when California voters adopted a ballot measure
that made it legal under state law for patients to grow and possess
marijuana for medical use after a doctor has specifically recommended it.

Soon, other states began adopting similar measures, and now eight others,
including Maine, have laws that decriminalize marijuana use in medical care.
Those status laws have not affected the illegality of marijuana under
federal law.

The spread of that movement prompted a sharp response by the Clinton
administration, and the Bush administration has continued that approach. The
key tactic has been to threaten doctors with loss of their DEA-approved
licenses to prescribe federally controlled drugs.

A group of doctors, patients, and medical organizations sued the drug czar
and the DEA in an attempt to free doctors to continue making recommendations
that patients smoke marijuana.

A federal judge, while finding that the government allows doctors to talk
about the pros and cons of marijuana as a medicine, ruled that it violated
the First Amendment to take action against doctors when they recommend its
actual use.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, upheld the
judge's order against revoking a doctor's license with the DEA and launching
investigations that could result in that penalty. The appeals court rejected
the government argument that a doctor's recommendation to smoke marijuana is
the same as an actual prescription.

If a patient's doctor suggests marijuana, the appeals court said, the
patient might use that advice as a way to get into a federally controlled
research program on the drug or use it as a way to lobby the government to
change its policy.

Nothing in the judge's order, the appeals court stressed, bars the
government from prosecuting doctors who "aid and abet" their patients in the
actual distribution and possession of marijuana.

The Justice Department appeal to the Supreme Court argued that the lower
court ruling "impairs the Executive's authority to enforce the law in an
area vital to the public health and safety." There was no indication in the
court's decision not to consider the case that any of the nine justices had
voted to do so.