HIGH COURT: DOCS' POT ADVICE IS OK

Victory for Medical Marijuana Movement

Washington - The U.S. Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will
let stand a federal appeals court ruling that bars the federal
government from punishing doctors who recommend marijuana to their
patients.

Without comment, the court declined to hear the Bush administration's
challenge of a 2002 ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
that upheld a district court injunction blocking federal efforts to
prevent doctors from telling patients marijuana might help them. That
policy violated constitutional free-speech rights, the San
Francisco-based circuit court ruled.

The decision came as a surprise defeat for the federal government in
its battle against the medical marijuana movement. In his appeal
petition to the court, Solicitor General Theodore Olson had called the
9th Circuit decision "an issue of exceptional and continuing
importance" that "impairs the Executive's authority to enforce the law
in an area vital to the public health and safety."

Instead, the court took a step whose immediate impact is favorable to
the campaign for medical marijuana.

The principal effect is to allow doctors to recommend marijuana to
patients - but not to provide it to them.

That is important because medical marijuana laws generally permit the
possession of small amounts of marijuana only with written
authorization from a doctor, though in California an oral
recommendation suffices.

"If there can be no recommendation, there can be no patients who
benefit," said Graham Boyd, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer
who urged the Supreme Court to reject the government's appeal. But now
doctors can make recommendations without fear of federal
investigation, Boyd said.

The decision leaves intact a 2000 order by a federal district court
that barred the federal government from acting on threats to deny
doctors who recommend marijuana the right to prescribe controlled
substances or to participate in Medicaid and Medicare.

However, ordinary possession and distribution of marijuana remain
illegal under federal and state laws in all nine states - Alaska,
Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and
Washington - that have medical marijuana laws on the books.

Though federal prosecutions of people for possession of small amounts
of marijuana are rare, the threat of legal action against those who
supply marijuana to people with a doctor's note remains. In 2001, the
Supreme Court upheld a Justice Department effort to shut down an
Oakland "cannabis club," ruling that there is no "medical necessity"
exception to the federal ban on marijuana possession.

Advocates of medical marijuana laws say that smoking marijuana is
often the only way that patients with cancer or AIDS can cope with
pain or relieve crippling nausea.